Propane tank leak displaces neighbors

BRADLEY – A work crew demolishing a building at an abandoned junkyard Friday ruptured the nozzle on a large propane tank, releasing the fuel and prompting the evacuation of several neighbors in this small Penobscot County town.

Firefighters weren’t sure how much propane was in the 500-pound-capacity tank and how much leaked out before it could be contained.

Workers with Webber Energy Fuels Co. in Bangor used specialized lines to bleed out and burn off any of the gas left over.

“The scene is under control now. We’re just waiting for it to bleed out,” Bradley Fire Chief Eric Gifford told reporters at about 2:45 p.m., a little more than three hours after the leak was first reported at the Main Street junkyard. Firefighters were still at the scene at 7 p.m.

Gifford said workers using an excavator knocked down a storage building and didn’t see the propane tank, which had been covered by debris inside. The excavator broke the nozzle on the tank and firefighters from the Bradley Volunteer Fire Department were called in at 11:36 a.m.

Once they realized what they were dealing with, firefighters alerted nearby residents to the potential danger and told them to evacuate, Gifford said.

Albert and Joyce Miller are neighbors of the former Currier junkyard that the town now owns and is trying to clean up. They live a few hundred feet from the wooded area where the leak occurred and they could sense the propane even before they were notified, Albert Miller, 76, said.

The couple weren’t too anxious to pack up and leave, even if for a few hours.

As breeders of Siamese cats, they had six cats in the house, three of them pregnant. A 3-year-old boy they were baby-sitting was getting ready for a nap, they said.

The couple and cats stayed put. Joyce Miller said they closed the windows and turned on a fan to dissipate any remnants of the gas they could smell.

Later, the fire chief showed up at their door and was more insistent that they evacuate. They packed up the five female Siamese cats into carriers and loaded them up into a pickup truck to be taken to the fire station three miles down the road. Maitai, the stud male, took more convincing.

“The moment I opened the door, he lost it,” Joyce Miller said, adding that the usually docile cat muscled his way out of a blanket wrapped around him. Joyce Miller and a firefighter returned with a larger carrier and managed to get the cat into it.

At the fire station, six young people ages 3 to 13, who normally stay at the Millers’ house after school, had been dropped off by the school bus.

Emily Cates, 13, said her middle school principal got onto the bus to tell her of the leak and that she was being dropped off at the fire station for the time being.

The children took the change of scenery in stride as they played and lounged on the fire department’s brush truck. Some got a primer on firefighting. Cates and cousin Danielle Magoon, 10, said firefighters who remained at the station showed them some of their equipment, from dive suits used for water rescues to more routine fire equipment.

Magoon liked the change of pace.

“It was funner,” she said.