1 killed when explosion at Michigan vape distributor sent canisters flying
A teenager in Michigan was struck and killed by a flying butane canister Monday evening following an explosive fire at a vapor distributor’s warehouse about a quarter-mile away, authorities said.
The 19-year-old man, who was not identified, was one of several people injured by pieces of metal projected as far as a mile away by the force of the explosion, said Mark Hackel, county administrator in eastern Michigan’s Macomb County . in an interview.
The fire, which started shortly before 9 p.m. Monday, filled the night sky with flames and smoke, prompted police to urge residents to avoid the area and left a trail of charred debris along 15 Mile Road, a highway in Clinton Township, Michigan. .
“You could see the amount of fire going through the air, and the explosions were shaking the car,” said Tim Duncan, chief of the Clinton Township Fire Department. said at a news conference on Tuesday morning.
The person who died was watching the fire when he was struck by the bus, the fire chief said. A firefighter was among those injured when shrapnel pierced the windshield of his car and hit his face. He was treated at a hospital and released.
David Storey, a hydraulic technician in Clinton Township, stood about 300 feet away from the fire with his fiancée and about 15 others, holding his phone in the air as he recorded a percussion of loud bangs and burning arcs of fiery canisters, which he said reminded him of fireworks.
“I felt the shock waves of it throughout my body,” he said in an interview, adding that the group had to back up several times due to the intensity of the heat.
Other people near the fire posted video on social media that showed a wall of flames and a thick plume of black smoke billowing into the sky.
Select Distributors and Goo Smoke Shop, which authorities said were located in the building, had stored more than half a truckload of butane canisters, which became projectiles when they caught fire.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of buses, each measuring 12 to 18 inches long and weighing 10 to 15 pounds, had exploded, authorities said.
Select Distributors sells vape products, butane, nitrous oxide tanks and CBD oils, according to its website.
Mr Duncan, the fire chief, said the company had received a shipment of butane containers in the past week and was also storing pallets of nitrous oxide and lighter fluids, more than 100,000 vape pens with lithium batteries and blades.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Although the fire died out around 4 a.m., a nearby railroad line restricted traffic on the tracks due to small explosions that still rang out from the rubble of the burned building on Tuesday.
“We expect several more to come during the day,” Mr Duncan said of the explosions.
The Detroit office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives dispatched fire investigators and accelerant detection K9s to help Clinton Township police determine what caused the fire.
On Monday night, authorities used social media to urge residents to stay away from the site of the explosion, the force of which affected telecommunications systems, causing a blackout of 911 calls to a police station about six miles away.
“We cannot overstate the danger that is happening right now,” Clinton Township police said said in one message. “Debris is projected into the air and falls up to a mile away from the explosion.”
About six miles northwest, Sterling Heights police said there were 911 phone lines were not functioning because of the explosion.
The electric company was working Tuesday to restore power to businesses near the vaping equipment warehouse. There were no evacuations in the area after air quality tests detected no hazardous material, Mr. Hackel said.
Mayor of Orlando reporting contributed.