A family vacation to Oliver concluded with a bang after a Port Coquitlam family's trailer exploded in their driveway late Saturday night.
The McIntosh family has done the week-long trailer camping trip to Oliver with friends for several years. This year, it coincided with 13-year-old Carson McIntosh's baseball tournament and, after he and his Tri-City Indians teammates won the Big League Experience camp trophy, the family headed home at about 2 p.m.
They pulled into their Anderson Way driveway about five hours later and, exhausted, they decided to put off unpacking until the morning.
"We put the propane on so the food wouldn't spoil," McIntosh said.
Shortly before 11:30 p.m. the trailer exploded with enough force to wake up neighbours as far as two blocks away.
"The house shook," McIntosh said. "I don't know how I slept through it."
She's guessing the explosion was caused by the refrigerator turning on; PoCo Fire Chief Nick Delmonico said initial reports suggest it may have been due to a propane cylinder leak.
"The family was all in the house so there were no injuries but it totaled the trailer from a damage perspective," he said.
McIntosh said their Oliver campsite offered an electrical hook-up so they hadn't used the propane during the week. But a few weeks ago the family used the tanks during a five-day camping trip to Alouette Lake.
"I guess the moral of the story is, if you have a choice between electric and propane, go with electric," McIntosh joked. "We're just so lucky we weren't in it" when it exploded, she added.
They've been able to salvage some of what was in the trailer at the time, including two iPads and a laptop computer, all of which are still working.
