<article about propane safety deleted>

Does anyone have any first-hand knowledge of incidents where propane
caused a horrendous explosion?  I think that the our schnozzes are
pretty good at detecting the rotten egg smell, so good that it's
pretty hard to stay where there's a big enough leak to cause an
explosion.  My experience:

Not reminisce about my college days, but here I go again...

Being poor, like "all" college students, I needed a cheap place to
live.  My wife wanted a dog, so we got one, and thus got kicked out
of our apartment.  While searching for a place to live, I came upon an
ad for a mobile home for $900.  I went and looked at it, and it was
a 1951 32x8 trailer (this story takes place in 1989).  It had a tar-paper
shack attached at the rear, to make another bedroom.

On to the propane angle.  The stove was a propane stove, and when we 
went inside to look over the trailer, it was pretty smelly.  Now the
owner was Chemical Engineering Phd candidate, and he owned dog, and
he smoked like a chimney.  We didn't know if the smell came from the dog,
the cigarettes, the clothes strewn about, the unwashed dishes, or _him_.

We ended up purchasing the trailer to live in, and even after he moved
his stuff out, the place still was smelly.  Using my nose, I narrowed down
the source to the stove.  Since I worked at the Environmental Health
department, I had access to lots of gadgets, one of which was a 
combustible gas detector.  I borrowed it, and tracked down the leak to
the oven's temp valve.  I took apart the valve, and discovered that
the grease that sealed it in the dim past was dry and cracked.  I 
greased the valve, put everything back together, and stopped the leak.

At the time, I wondered how this guy managed to survive in that tiny
trailer, with a propane leak, and him lighting up every five minutes?

My only conclusion was that you need a lot of propane leaked in order
to get combustion.  Or maybe the smoke from his cigarettes displaced
all the oxygen?

As always, Safety First!

-Jim