2 workers treated for minor injuries in ‘glorified garage fire’
Provincial authorities have issued enforcement orders after a propane explosion at a rural propane distribution facility in the RM of Taché injured three people and triggered a major emergency response.
Manitoba Workplace Safety and Health has imposed two stop-work orders and one improvement order following the incident at a distribution centre about 40 kilometres southeast of Winnipeg, a provincial spokesperson said in a statement to CBC. The orders relate to propane service and maintenance work, as well as the operation of a forklift at the site, according to the report.
The province’s Workplace Safety and Health branch is investigating the cause of the explosion and whether any occupational health and safety regulations were breached. Findings from the investigation could influence requirements for propane handling, maintenance practices and equipment use at similar facilities.
Timeline and fire conditions
The explosion occurred around 3:30 p.m. Thursday at a structure on the property where three people were working at the time, according to the RM of Taché fire department, as reported by CBC.
Deputy fire chief Jason Kroeker said crews arrived to find a building containing roughly 100 propane cylinders on fire. Outside the structure, he said there were an additional two to three bulk tanks and about 250 more cylinders, significantly increasing the complexity and risk of the response.
More than 2,000 tanks were also stored elsewhere on the property, according to the Winnipeg Free Press.
One person was airlifted by STARS air ambulance to Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg, while another was transported to the same hospital by ground ambulance. A third individual was treated at the scene and released. RCMP said the injuries were non-life-threatening.
The facility is owned by Prairie Propane. Company owner John Paille told CBC News two of his employees were treated for minor burns and released. He described the situation as a “glorified garage fire,” saying the blaze was confined to a 24-by-32-foot garage.
Fire hazards and BLEVE risk
Fire officials stressed that, despite the fire’s physical limits, the incident posed a serious hazard because of the number of propane tanks involved.
Kroeker said the fire created a significant danger of a BLEVE — a boiling liquid expanding vapour explosion — if any tank could not vent quickly enough. “You can have the tank actually explode and send out quite a debris field in all directions,” he said in a telephone interview with CBC News. “Large explosions would be our primary concern involving propane tanks.”
The configuration of bulk tanks and hundreds of cylinders in and around the structure required a defensive strategy focused on cooling exposed tanks and preventing further escalation.
Kroeker described the fire as a “complex and fast moving incident” that required support from neighbouring departments. Additional firefighters from Ste. Anne and Giroux were called in to assist at the scene.
He said the scale of propane storage at the site made the incident unusual for local crews. “This type of incident involving this amount of propane and number of bottles involved there would be a very exceptional incident type for us,” he said, according to CBC.
“It’s fairly common in working-structure fires or even vehicle fires that you might have a number of standard propane bottles, but not in the thousands of propane bottles on kind of a condensed site.”
File photo from RM of Tache Fire Department
