WESTFIELD – It would have been an unfortunate mishap and a routine fire – except for the two propane tanks.
As it turned out, the tanks did not explode in the Friday morning fire in a Lincoln Street driveway and the damage was limited to an unregistered 1996 Ford Probe under restoration, the 1997 GMC Jimmy parked behind the Ford, and the vinyl siding of the house where the cars were parked.
At 11:19 a.m., a caller advised a 911 emergency dispatcher of a fire and city police officer Jose Torres was the first emergency responder to arrive at 13 Lincoln Street.
Torres found what appeared to be a car gloriously aflame and reports that the resident immediately informed him that there were two tanks of propane in the trunk of the vehicle, so he used the fire extinguisher from his cruiser to attack the fire.
Closer inspection revealed that the fire was actually outside the vehicle, in a city owned refuse receptacle which had been stored behind the car.
The resident said that he had a fire in his fire pit the night before and earlier in the morning he had emptied the ashes into his rubbish receptacle.
The responding firefighters, commanded by Dep. Chief Patrick Kane, used foam to put out the fire but Kane said it kept flaring up.
Kane said “Jose knocked it down” but said the flames reappeared and he thought that perhaps magnesium parts were burning.
What Kane eventually found was that the car’s gas line had melted and the gas from the full gas tank was dripping and igniting.
Dep. Chief Patrick Egloff, the department’s fire prevention officer, explained that propane tanks are equipped with emergency valves which release gas if the pressure inside a tank becomes dangerously high.
Kane said that the escaping gas was contained in the car and did not ignite because “most of it (the heat of the fire) was outside” and the interior of the car did not get hot enough to burn.
He pointed out that empty plastic bottles in the trunk were not melted by the fire
Egloff said that such tanks are unlikely to explode because of the built-in safety features.
He said that the relief valves prevent the pressure inside tanks from getting dangerously high by venting and said that flames are “not really going to get inside” a tank to cause an explosion. He said that, if the escaping gas were to ignite, “it would more likely shoot like a rocket.”
He said that, while there have been instances of tanks being propelled more than a mile when escaping gas ignites, “the safety devices are made so they don’t propel.”
Egloff said that, at Lincoln Street, the venting gas did not ignite because “they didn’t have any flame impinging on them.”
Egloff said that he advised the resident to never again store propane tanks in a vehicle because, even without a fire, the interior summer temperatures are likely to be high enough to cause the pressure inside the tank to trigger the relief valve.
The tanks were removed from the vehicle, Kane said, while they “were still hissing” and allowed to cool. They were transported the city’s waste transfer station for disposal according to the usual protocols for propane tanks.
Kane reports that the damage to the Ford Probe was extensive but limited to the back of the vehicle.
The hood and front of the car are still pristine but the rear is a blackened wreck, although the damage to the interior is limited.
The hood of a vehicle parked behind the Probe was damaged and the vinyl siding on the side of the house near the driveway melted but Kane said a thermal imaging device used to check the wall showed no fire.
The city owned refuse container in which the fire started was totally destroyed and unrecognizable, according to a detective who investigated the fire and described what was left of the receptacle as “a blob.”
