Ellison Bay Building To Be Razed Next Week
Ellison Bay Building To Be Razed Next Week; Highway 42 to be reopened next week
WFRV-TV (Original story with photos here)
(WFRV) ELLISON BAY, Wis. The Liberty Grove Town Board held a special emergency board meeting Friday afternoon regarding the Ellison Bay disaster.
A severed underground liquid propane line caused Monday’s explosions that killed two vacationers, injured seven others, wrecked three buildings and virtually closed down this tiny tourist town in Door County.
The town board has decided to fence-in the Cedar Grove Resort, where two of the three buildings are located, while the investigation continues.
The town will also demolish the third building that was wrecked, the historic Pioneer Store, possibly on Tuesday.
Authorities hope to reopen Highway 42 by Wednesday
The Door County Sheriff’s Department says residents have been allowed back into their homes, and most of the businesses are back open. The power has been restored to most areas except for the Cedar Grove Resort. And local traffic is being allowed into Ellison Bay as far as the Mink River Basin Supper Club.
Chief Deputy Gary Behling said the severed line was on private property and serviced two of the buildings at the Cedar Grove Resort where two of the explosions occurred.
The severed line was connected to at least one of two 1,000-gallon tanks on the property, Behling said.
“It fed the Cedar Grove Resort,” he said. “They have capped the line that was damaged. They continue to test the area around the explosion sites.”
A contractor for Wisconsin Public Service Corp. worked in the area last week burying some electrical cable with a drilling machine, and the propane line was apparently broken during that work, Behling said.
Marilyn Bazett-Jones, a spokeswoman for WPS in Green Bay, said private propane lines are not marked by Diggers Hotline and only the owner would know where they are buried. The statewide Diggers Hotline, supported by public utilities and municipalities, helps people make sure excavation work doesn’t hit buried utility lines.
“There are a lot of questions,” Bazett-Jones said. “The nature of the work is under investigation. We are cooperating fully.”
Some holes are being dug in efforts to ventilate any gas that may remain trapped underground, Behling said.
Investigators still were trying to determine how the gas flowed underground, ending up in some buildings that exploded and skipping others that were unharmed, and the sequence of the explosions, Behling said.
Behling did not know how much propane may have leaked out. Liquid propane becomes a gas when it is released into the air.
The blasts, about 2:30 a.m. Monday, collapsed the Pioneer Store, a landmark and the only grocery store in this unincorporated village of about 150 residents near the tip of the Door County peninsula, and damaged the resort’s maintenance building that included several living units.
The explosion burned down the resort cabin where Patrick M. Higdon, 49, and Margaret Brooks Higdon, 45, of Bloomfield, Hills, Mich., were killed. They were vacationing with other family members, including three children, two of whom were seriously injured, authorities said.