(Spirit Lake)– A propane leak Tuesday resulted in the evacuation of some residents on the north side of Big Spirit Lake. Spirit Lake Fire Chief Pat Daly tells KUOO news they were called to 24580 McClelland Lane, just east of Mini Wakan State Park. He says a tree fell on a propane tank just outside of a house there…
“We evacuated the ones real close there. We kept updates with the Communications Center on the wind speed and direction. We were doing gas checks like every half an hour or so. We’d go up in with our monitors and then we got together with the propane company. We had a bunch of ideas put together. We threw some of them out and the best idea we had was to just hook a hose to it and get it to another lot and then just burn it off.”
Daly says they’ve dealt with leaks from propane tanks before, but nothing quite like this one…
“You know we do training for propane a lot, but never like this. I mean that tree could have landed on that tank anywhere else and we could have dealt with it really quick but it was on the one spot where we needed to get to. We were afraid to lift that tree because if that valve had broke off like they thought it did, man, my guys would have been right in the product and it would have been a bad scene.”
Daly says the tree came down during Monday night’s storm. He says crews doing some clean up Tuesday morning smelled the leaking propane and called 911.
Spirit Lake firefighters were on the scene about six hours.
