If you’ve walked the earth long enough, chances are you’ve had at least one too-close-for-comfort, or potentially near-death, experience much like the one experienced by a North Dakota man earlier this week.
According to the local Fargo news station WDAY 6 (Inforum.com), a man escaped from a burning garage after a 300-pound propane tank caught fire inside. The fire was presumed to have started from a mini explosion set off by the tank, and neighbors quickly called the local fire station to report what they heard.
“We just heard a loud boom and a guy was running out of the garage,” said Stacy Quast, who lives across the street from the home.
When the firefighters arrived, they found one man who had been injured in the flames but did not release his name. Neighbors believe he is the 41-year-old son of the home’s owners. He was believed to have been in the garage when the fire started, but he made it out before it got to out of hand.
Propane fuel, which serves approximately 60 million people in the United States, can be useful for heating homes, but it’s also dangerous in this kind of environment. Firefighters were able to extinguish the flames relatively quickly, but they had to allow the fire on the actual propane tank to continue burning as they kept pouring water on it to prevent a complete explosion.
According to Battalion Chief Bruce Anderson, the fire on the propane tank burned for about two hours before it was completely emptied of its contents and able to be capped. Due to the nature of the fire, the situation would have been much worse if the propane tank was left to burn untreated for much longer.
The total monetary amount of damage done to the garage and stuff inside was about $40,000, according to the Fargo Fire Department. Part of the exterior of the house located nearby that was damaged too was estimated to cost about $2,000.