An upstate New York couple had a rude awakening when their camper exploded Monday morning.
Barbara and Robert Hamlin, aged 74 and 75 respectively, woke up to find their camper filled with the smell of gas. Robert Hamlin suggested his wife had turned on the camp stove, which caused the explosion at about 10:54 a.m.
State police in Lafayette responded to a 911 call reporting an explosion, arriving to find emergency firefighters trying to clear the back of the campground to find Barbara Hamlin.
Robert Hamlin was standing outside the camper when it exploded and crashed to the ground, suffering visible burns on his face. His wife suffered a fractured left ankle but was conscious when first responders found her.
The explosion also caused extensive damage to the surrounding area, including the exterior of the couple’s home where they parked their camper and Chevy Silverado 2500.
Robert Hamlin advised that the couple had left their propane tank open overnight, which would have flooded the camper with gas. The tent itself did not survive the blast, with the back completely open.
Emergency responders took the couple to Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse for treatment, and both were admitted with non-life-threatening injuries.
The back of Hamlin’s tent Monday morning after the propane tank explosion. FOX News
Patty Davis of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) told Fox News Digital that the commission has recorded about 2,100 emergency room admissions between 2020 and 2022 related to exploding propane tanks, an average of 700 per year – which would indicate an increase in incidents such from the initial figure citing 600 per year.
The CPSC uses the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, which emergency rooms use to report any consumer product-related admissions so the commission can track the issue. Davis stressed that this number is only an estimate, using a sample extrapolated by statisticians to the total amount the commission reports.
This does not include the total number of such incidents because some do not result in a visit to the emergency room.
An exterior view of the Hamlin family’s tent after the explosion, showing visible cracks in the front of the tent and the tank that caused the explosion. FOX News
Davis could not speculate on why the number of incidents may have increased or what caused these incidents.
The Department of Energy reports that despite the number of explosions, the chance of someone dying from a propane tank explosion is about one in 37 million.
Connecticut-based oil and propane company LEVCO wrote on its blog that bringing a propane tank to the point of explosion “is a very difficult task” due to the safety devices and mechanisms in place.
The interior of the Hamlin family tent, where wife Barbara, 74, may have turned on the stove and caused the explosion. He suffered a broken ankle. FOX News
The two main causes of such explosions are, usually, the tank being left open – as may have happened with Hamlins – or the pressure inside the tank reaching a point where it can no longer safely escape, which causes the tank to burst open.
The pressure issue, known as a Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion, occurs when the tank itself is exposed to extreme heat and the liquid inside it expands as a result.
The Wisconsin Center for Environmental Education reported in 2020 that about 47 million households in the United States use propane for outdoor gas grilling alone, with a report from 2017 stating about 830,000 farms in the US use propane for various tasks, including drying crops and sterilizing milk.
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