Propane Fire a Reminder
“Snow wars” cause leaks, fire, days-long outage in Old Mammoth
A fire at the three-tank propane farm on Old Mammoth Road (at Rose Way) caused propane service to be shut off to 167 customers on Friday, January 27, and as of press time, service had still not been restored to the affected homes.
Mammoth Lakes Fire Marshal Thom Heller, who is leading the investigation into the incident, told The Sheet on Monday that the fire started when AmeriGas workers were attempting to fill tanks at the farm with liquid propane. In a tank farm, the liquid propane (which is 277 times more compact than propane gas) is fed into large tanks. That propane then travels to a “vaporizer,” which is essentially a heater, Heller told The Sheet, that converts the liquid propane to gas to be fed to homes.
The problem, Heller said, was that several leaks were created by the pressure of piles of snow on top of the tanks and connections at the farm.
It’s the result of a “game affectionately known as ‘Snow Wars,’ around here,” Heller told The Sheet.
“There are only so many places to put snow. Sure, everybody’s treading on each other’s terrain, without any consequences in some cases, in others, really burying whatever is at the bottom of the pile of snow.”
When AmeriGas technicians came out to fill the tanks, Heller said, they were unaware of several leaks that had been created by the snow pressure. Liquid propane found its way into cracks and openings in the snow, and when that propane reached the vaporizer, it caught fire.
Mammoth Lakes Fire Department “ended up seeing temperatures as high as 400 degrees in the vicinity of the tanks during the suppression effort,” said Heller. He emphasized that, although that number seems high, it’s “not critical [as it] relates to the steel tanks there…there was no bubbling of paint on the exterior of the tanks. Indicators didn’t exist as far as getting the tanks out of service. The plastic caps at the top of the tanks didn’t melt.”
