Resident Varug Mehrabian, left, and Councillor Maria Augimeri go over the Ontario Fire Marshall’s report on the Sunrise Propane explosion.1--Sarah Dea
The pre-dawn propane blast that ripped apart Toronto's Downsview neighbourhood two years ago was caused by a technical operation the company had been warned to cease almost two years earlier.
A fire marshal's report, finalized in July and obtained by The Globe, states it was a "tank-to-tank" transfer that caused the Sunrise Propane explosion that killed one man and caused extensive damage to the North York neighbourhood in August of 2008.
A hose failure on the discharge side of the tank meant liquid propane escaped, evaporated and came into contact with "a competent ignition source resulting in a vapour cloud explosion.
"Accordingly, this explosion and fire will be classified as accidental - mechanical failure."
The report notes that Sunrise Propane, which was charged under the province's environmental protection act in 2009, was warned in November 2006 to cease its tank-to-tank transfers, but did not.
The report also identifies numerous inadequacies in existing safety regulations, noting that "the current code/standards do not provide sufficient safety requirements addressing a situation involving a liquid propane leak."
The explosion rocked the community, raining asbestos and charred metal and causing the evacuation of a 1.6-kilometre area.
It also took the life of 25-year-old Parminder Singh Saini, a Sunrise employee and Sheridan College student.
A class action suit against Sunrise Propane and the property owner is in process.
Local councillor Maria Augimeri says the report is a "vindication" for residents whose lives were turned upside down by the explosion two years ago.
"It points a clear finger to the fact that there was inadequate oversight of the industry," she said in an interview with The Globe.
But now, she says, it's up to the province to fix that by tightening technical standards and safety statutes - and by giving local governments more power to regulate industrial operations within city limits.
The report itself would seem to support this move: It notes that the Sunrise facility met existing requirements used "to determine if the facility could be located in a heavily populated area," but adds that maybe these regulations should be reexamined: "Consideration should be given towards factoring in the total combustible gas stored on site, adjacent land use and site congestion in the site approval criteria," it reads.
"How many times does this need to happen? How many deaths do we need to look at before we change the law?" Ms. Augimeri said.
"Industry does not adequately regulate itself - when does it ever?"
TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT
Maurice Coulter
Age: 89 and six months
Living on Spalding Road, a few houses down from the Sunrise Propane site: Since 1946
If Maurice Coulter hadn't been at her daughter's house in Caledon East, it could have been a different story.
She might have been home when the force from the propane blast next door blew through her house. Shattered glass was so pervasive she had to have all her upholstered furniture replaced - they couldn't remove the shards.
"I could have been out the window, in a see-through nightgown and with no teeth - or I could have been killed," she said, sitting on her front stoop on the Spalding Avenue house her husband dug the basement for more than 60 years ago.
"Goodness knows what would have happened to me."
Instead, she found out about the explosion on television.
It was days before Ms. Coulter was allowed back to collect a few valuables from the house - "when you've been living in a place for this long, what do you take?" - and another six months of living with her children before she could move back in. Fresh paint, a new refrigerator, new furniture, new windows and doors.
"It should never have been allowed here," she said.
Jeff, Michael and Dianne Green
Ages: 43, 73 and 86
Living on Katherine Road, less than a dozen houses away from Sunrise Propane Site: Since 1960
At first, Jeff Green thought it was thunder that jolted him out of bed just before 4 a.m. - "really loud, close, right-in-the-backyard thunder."
But then came the loud hissing sound. When he stepped outside, a sky full of orange. And then a massive blast.
It wasn't until he stepped back inside the house that he realized he was standing in a sea of shattered glass, his father Michael Green standing shirtless in the middle and peering out the window at the fireball.
The family spent the next three weeks in a hotel nearby - they wanted to stay longer, Jeff Green said, but insurance wouldn't cover it so they returned home to still-boarded-up windows. The shock turned Dianne Green into a stranger, she recalls.
"Somebody told me I looked like me, but it wasn't me - I don't know what happened," she said. "I was so tense."
This should have been a wakeup call for politicians at both the local and provincial levels, Mr. Green said. But he's worried it hasn't been - and that something like this could happen again.