LINCOLN, R.I. (WHDH) - An explosion at a Lincoln, Rhode Island gas station left a car heavily damaged and the owner injured Tuesday afternoon.
The driver of the white Toyota Camry works for a local plumbing company and told police he had no idea there were tanks of acetylene, a gas used for welding, leaking in his trunk.
Investigators said the 62-year-old driver pulled into the 7Eleven on George Washington Highway around 2 p.m. That is when he pushed a button to automatically open his gas tank.
That tiny spark ignited the fumes from the acetylene and caused the explosion.
The driver suffered a large cut on his arm but is expected to be OK.
Brian Necastro was working on a hotel project behind the gas station and said he heard the boom and went running to see what happened.
“It sounded really loud,” he said. “We are building a hotel back here and as we are doing that we have a lot of heavy equipment moving around and it was loud enough for us to know it wasn’t the heavy equipment.”
Officer Matthew Paradis was working a traffic detail nearby when he heard the blast and came running as well, pulling a fire extinguisher from his cruiser to quickly douse the flames.
The driver, “was definitely in shock but he kinda had an idea of what was going on and he was very matter of fact about it,” Paradis said.
Video from the scene shows the pumps mostly intact.
The gas station was temporarily shut down.
An investigation to determine how those leaking tanks got into the man’s trunk is underway.
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