Biodiesel explosion destroys home

Home destroyed after two-alarm fire fueled by vegetable oil in garage

By Christian Gaston

The Forest Grove News-Times, Nov 5, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

Firefighters from Forest Grove, Hillsboro, Banks and Cornelius spent about 30 minutes suppressing the flames from a house fire last Thursday where grease and diesel burned extraordinarily hot.

Chris Larson / New-Times

Forest Grove firefighters had an extra surprise last Thursday night when they arrived on the scene of a raging house fire: biodiesel in the garage.

The fuel, which the homeowner, David Chelson, had been developing for a friend’s truck, ignited around 7 p.m. Oct. 29. Chelson’s wife smelled smoke, and opened up the garage door to see a wall of flames.

Neighbors reported hearing explosions from blocks away from the house on the 3300 block of Valley Crest Way as barrels of biofuel popped open inside the garage.

Chelson’s wife and her children escaped the house and stayed with family nearby while firefighters arrived. The flames were controlled in about 30 minutes, but crews worked into the evening to try and figure out what sparked the flames.

Surveying the damage the next day, Chelson said he’d been producing small batches of biofuel as a hobby. But looking at the burned-out hulk of his home, he didn’t know what came next.

“Just start over,”Chelson said.

Firefighters said the extensive damage caused by the flames makes it impossible to identify the fire’s cause.

Dave Nemeyer, spokesman for Forest Grove Fire & Rescue, said when he investigates a fire he starts at the least damaged point in the house and follows the fire damage the most severely damaged point.

That gives him a sense of where the fire started and how it spread. But in this case, the fire engulfed so many fuels so rapidly that it’s not clear how it progressed.

“The burn patterns are pointing us so many different directions in there,” Nemeyer said.

But Nemeyer said the biodiesel and vegetable oil in the garage created trouble for firefighters in the same way extreme heat can. Luckily, most of the seven or so drums firefighters spotted in the garage seemed to be empty.

“Had those drums been full, we would have lost firefighters last night,” Nemeyer said.

Garage doors opened

Stranger still, the fire may not have destroyed the entire house had its garage doors not malfunctioned. For some reason, the fire caused the doors to short out and open automatically, allowing massive flames to lick out the front of the garage and ignite the upstairs of the building.

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