A commercial neighbourhood was shaken by the concussion of an explosion, Monday afternoon. The blast came from Allen's Scrap Yard in the 500 block of 2nd Avenue at about 1:45 p.m. at the height of the business day.
"Oh yeah, you heard it and you felt it," said Larry Kostiuk, who, at the time, was working in the mechanical bays at the Prince George Taxi compound a few lots away. "It shook the whole building. It sounded and felt like something really heavy fell over."
Kostiuk looked but saw no smoke or signs of destruction. What he didn't know - it happened too fast and was contained within the mountains of metal in the scrap yard - was there was a ball of fire that accompanied the percussive boom.
"A customer brought in something they shouldn't have, a propane tank, and it got caught by the hydraulic shears and went boom and there was some flame," said Alex Allen, proprietor of the scrap yard. "We do have a sign here that says that, and we tell people as well, but sometimes things sneak by. This is why it's so dangerous."
Someone at the yard was nearly the casualty of the wrongly placed propane tank.
"There was a guy nearby, he was taken to the hospital just to check him over, but he was walking around and talking, he seems OK, and that's really lucky," said Allen. "A bit of damage was done to a machine, but it should be OK, too, nothing major."
According to the City of Prince George, the proper way of disposing of outdated, damaged or unwanted propane cylinders is to drop them off at the city's transfer station at Quinn Street and 18th Avenue (250-562-6209), at the Turbo Gas station at 6388 Birchwood Drive (250-962-1702) or at CG Gas Fitting at 675 1st Avenue (250-564-6331).
Allen said this sort of incident is rare at the scrap yard.
"We've been here 47 years and this is the second time," he said.
Emergency crews from Prince George Fire Rescue Service attended but no fire was present.
