A San Juan fam­i­ly, whose house was de­stroyed by fire yes­ter­day, has joined the grow­ing list of per­sons blam­ing faulty and leak­ing gas tanks for their loss.

Re­count­ing how the blaze start­ed yes­ter­day, one of the dis­traught home­own­ers re­called fill­ing a ket­tle and plac­ing it atop the stove be­fore turn­ing on the gas around 6 am, as she was ac­cus­tomed do­ing.

Stand­ing in the front yard as she stared tear­ful­ly at the still smoul­der­ing struc­ture around 8 am, she said, “There was no odour at all, no scent to say there was gas leak­ing or any­thing. No hiss­ing sound, no noth­ing at all.”

She added, “As I lit the stove and put on the ket­tle, I made prob­a­bly about two steps walk­ing away and when I looked back...the stove was on fire, in flames, as well as the line with the gas tank, every­thing.”

The woman, who re­quest­ed that her name not be used, said she screamed to her hus­band, who was in an­oth­er room. She said she tried­to turn off the gas while he threw a wet blan­ket on top of the stove to try and keep the blaze from spread­ing.

“But in a few sec­onds, the walls and roof start­ed to go up,” she said.

She claimed, “This was a new tank we put on last night (Sat­ur­day). I did the soap test, saw noth­ing, and then I pro­ceed­ed to put on the head on the tank.

“I al­so checked to en­sure it was se­cure, which it was, and then I pro­ceed­ed us­ing it, which, as I said, was last night, there was no prob­lem. But this morn­ing (Sun­day) I woke up and like I said, got no gas odour, no hiss­ing sound, no noth­ing at all.”

She cried, “My en­tire home is gone...we lost every­thing. The on­ly thing we didn’t lose was our lives and I am thank­ful for that.”

Four peo­ple have died in in­ci­dents linked to LPG tank-re­lat­ed ex­plo­sions so far this year

In an ad­vi­so­ry on Oc­to­ber 16, Ram­co In­dus­tries Lim­it­ed sought to ed­u­cate the pub­lic on the safe use of Liq­ue­fied Pe­tro­le­um Gas (LPG), fol­low­ing re­cent re­ports of gas tank ex­plo­sions in homes.

They out­lined key safe­ty mea­sures for users, in­clud­ing the use of on­ly ap­proved reg­u­la­tors and hoses that meet codes EN16129 and EN559. Of­fi­cials warned that reg­u­la­tors should be re­placed every five years and hoses every two years, or im­me­di­ate­ly if dam­aged, to en­sure safe­ty.

Fire of­fi­cers from the San Juan Fire Sta­tion re­spond­ed and ex­tin­guished the blaze.