Snowmobile catches fire
“I can’t stress enough how important it is to watch your kids”
Parents issue warning to others after son escapes injury
What started out as a harmless day of snowmobiling has an Eastport Peninsula family issuing a caution to all parents.
Earlier this week the Sturges — from St. Chad’s – were on a trip to Great Brehat, on the Great Northern Peninsula, to visit family and go snowmobiling.
During an outing, their seven-year-old son — Ethan — tipped over his snowmobile, pinning his leg underneath. Shortly after, the snowmobile caught on fire.
Ethan has been operating a snowmobile for the past two years, even getting his own youth snowmobile — a 2012 Phantom 250 — last winter.
He had logged more than 400 kilometres on the machine when the incident occurred.
His parents Perry and Connie always made it a point to keep an eye on their son while he’s snowmobiling.
On Tuesday, Ethan was riding his snowmobile in his grandparents’ yard.
“But this time he went up the hill, the snowmobile tipped sideways and he ended up tipping over, pinning his leg under it,” said Perry. “It wasn’t enough to hurt him.”
However, when he went to get Ethan back on his snowmobile, he noticed what appeared, at first, to be steam.
When he got closer it became clear that it was smoke.
“So I started running to get him out of it,” said Perry. “When I got to him you could see the flames.”
He freed his son and, by the time they got clear, the snowmobile was completely engulfed.
All that is left of the machine is the frame.
Ethan was calm throughout the ordeal, said his father, but after reality started to sink in it weighed heavy on the sevenyear-old.
“I couldn’t see the fire so I wasn’t really scared,” Ethan said. “But when I heard my dad say it was on fire, I got a little more scared.”
As for how the fire started Perry couldn’t say for certain, however, he did point out that gas seems to have leaked out of the tank — possibly through a vent or overflow — as the cap was still on the tank yet his son’s clothes were soaked in gas.
The Sturges will be following up with the manufacture about the incident.
However, the whole ordeal has the Sturges reminding parents to keep an eye on their children.
“I can’t stress enough how important it is to watch your kids,” said Perry. “If he was off by himself, I can’t even think about what could have happened.”