Units were dispatched to a report of a pool house fire, next to a residence. It was mid-afternoon on a weekday. The two-man on-duty engine crew arrived from about four miles away, just ahead of a single-man engine crew from a paid-on-call station less than a mile away. The dispatcher had warned that the pool house contained chlorine and LP gas tanks. While in full PPE, one FF from the first-arriving engine had just begun the stretch of the 1-3/4-inch pre-connect to the rear of the home (a distance of 60-75 feet), when a VERY loud "pop" was heard by the operators of the two engines on the street. The operators went to check on the FF stretching the line and found him on his hands and knees in the driveway at the front of the home. The FF said he had gotten hit in the leg with debris from a flying/burning LP tank. He later related that he had seen the tank burning and had just turned around to advise the Deputy Chief, who was the operator of the second-arriving engine, when the tank exploded. The exploded tank had violently ruptured into a sort of warped, stainless "Ninja-Star" shape and landed in some brush about 35 feet southwest from the burned shed. The top of the tank was found with the pop-off valve intact, lying about 25 feet due west from the pool house. It is unclear at this point whether the pop-off valve ever functioned. An additional piece of shrapnel was found in the grass about 15 feet to the southwest of the pool house. The firefighter was taken to the local trauma center and, fortunately, suffered only a painful bruise and some temporary loss of mobility due to muscle spasms. He lost about two days of work for recovery. His turnout pants received heat damage in the affected leg. The third-arriving three-man engine crew (automatic aid from the adjacent township) took over the extinguishment of the fire and the overhaul of the scene.

LESSONS LEARNED:

Full PPE protects firefighters. Even though were advised and aware of chemical and gas hazards in the fire building, it still doesn't mean they won't go ahead and explode on us anyway. The fire keeps burning when FFs are injured and the remaining crew needs to attend to them Automatic Aid on structure fires (especially during limited manning in the daytime)is exactly the back-up planned-for and needed in such situations. Sometimes God smiles on us.