Source Of Ellison Bay Gas Leak Found
(WFRV – Original Article.) ELLISON BAY, Wis. A severed propane line is now being blamed for causing the explosion in Door County that killed a Michigan couple and destroyed three buildings.
Sheriff Terry Vogel says it appears liquid propane caused the explosion in Ellison Bay early Monday morning. Vogel says they’ve capped off the leak and continue to monitor the gas levels in the area. Authorities did not detect dangerous gasses on Monday and Tuesday, but a resurgence of explosive gasses on Wednesday sent investigators back into the evacuation zone to search for the source.
WPS spokesman Kerry Spees says a contractor for Wisconsin Public Service Corp. worked in the area late last week burying some electrical cable.
Three early-morning explosions on Monday rocked the tiny tourist town on the shores of Lake Michigan. One of the blasts killed a couple from Michigan on a family vacation and severely injured two of their children and the woman’s parents, authorities said.
“They were vacationing together. This was their annual vacation. They did it (at Ellison Bay) for a long, long time,” the Rev. Norman Nawrocki, pastor of St. Regis Roman Catholic Parish in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., said.
Killed were Patrick M. Higdon, 49, and Margaret Brooks Higdon, 45, according to the Brown County Medical Examiner’s office in Green Bay.
Two of their three children, Patrick and Megan, remained hospitalized in Green Bay as did Margaret Higdon’s parents, James and Margery Brooks, Nawrocki said. The boy suffered injuries to his right eye and cheekbone, and the girl had her spleen removed, Nawrocki said.
Among the grandmother’s injuries was a broken hip and two ankles, Nawrocki said. The priest did not know the extent of the grandfather’s injuries. Three other people had minor injuries.
About 400 people attended a Tuesday morning Mass held on behalf of the family, Nawrocki said.
“The parish has just been devastated,” he said.
The blasts, about 2:30 a.m. Monday, collapsed a 136-year-old grocery store, burned down a cottage where the couple was killed and damaged a maintenance building that also includes several living units in this unincorporated village of about 150 residents near the tip of the Door County peninsula, authorities said.
The cottage was part of the Cedar Grove Resort, where 49 people were staying.
Townsfolk described the grocery store, the Pioneer Store, as the lifeblood of the community, a place to get the morning newspaper, sip a bottle of soda, rent a movie or just gossip about who was sick. It even opened on Christmas Day.
“It was a real treasure and I will dearly miss it,” said Betsy Titterington, 55, who lives about a mile from the blast. “When people come to visit, that was one of the first places you would take them.”
The wrecked buildings covered an area about 200 yards long and some other buildings between them were not damaged.
Highway 42 through the village was to remain closed indefinitely as the cleanup continued, requiring travelers going further north to be detoured around the village, Vogel said.
Late Tuesday, the five-member Sister Bay/Liberty Grove Fire Commission authorized the immediate demolition of the Pioneer Store and the collapsed maintenance building, said Denise Bhirdo, a member of the commission. To speed the process, the commission met in the middle of a town road in order to officially condemn the properties.
It is not safe to reopen Highway 42 until the Pioneer Store is demolished, Bhirdo said.
Signs that the village was slowly returning to normal began to appear Tuesday morning. Just blocks up the road from the blast, some people played tennis on a community court. A meeting between some investigators, including the sheriff, and property owners took place inside the Mink River Basin Supper Club just across the street from the flattened Pioneer Store.
The Pioneer Store endeared people because it was an old-fashioned grocery store, with antique fixtures and a hammered tin ceiling, Titterington said. “You could charge your stuff.”
Michael Brecke, 59, called it simply an old country store.
“All we needed was a space in the middle with a pot belly stove and two guys chewing tobacco sitting there,” he said. “It was so much in the daily life of this community.”
For now, townsfolk will have to drive about five miles south to Sister Bay to the Piggly Wiggly store for groceries, Titterington said.
As she stared at the wrecked Pioneer Store, Titterington hoped it would be rebuilt but knew it would never be the same.
And her tiny village? “I am sure it will come back to life,” she said. “It’s a great little town.”