Volunteer groups cleaning up a homeless encampment in Seattle over Labor Day weekend made a shocking discovery.

The volunteers found approximately 80 propane tanks in the encampment, with about 20 of them still containing flammable material.

Non-profit We Heart Seattle’s Program Director Tim Emerson said exploding propane tanks are associated with many encampment-related fires.

Emerson described the propane tanks as a “ticking timebomb.”

“The city of Seattle’s homelessness dashboard shows there have been an average of two encampment-related fires a day in the city between January 2024 and June 2024, which is the latest data that was available,” KOMO News stated.

KOMO News reports:

About 50 volunteers worked to get the tanks out of the woods, down a steep trail and then loaded them onto a truck to be taken away to be recycled.

The greenbelt is nestled in between multi-million-dollar homes on the Magnolia Bluff above and the Elliot Bay Marina below, dotted with hundreds of boats and yachts. The greenbelt borders Puget Sound to the west.

In addition to removing the tanks, Emerson said volunteers cleared approximately 5.6 tons of debris from the area. Emerson said that the total doesn’t count the weight of the tanks.

According to the Seattle Fire Department, firefighters responded to 582 encampment-related fires between January 2024 and the end of August. The department didn’t have any breakdowns regarding propane tanks associated with those fires available at the time this story was published.

Watch footage from prior encampment-related fires caused by exploding propane tanks:

Per FOX 13 Seattle:

Volunteers helped remove more than 80 propane tanks from a homeless encampment during a two-day cleanup in Magnolia Park.

“We found two guns today, blades, machetes, gasoline tanks and over 80 propane tanks,” said Andrea Suarez, CEO and founder of We Heart Seattle.

The encampment sits off the walking trails accessible near Elliot Bay Marina.

“This was a ticking time bomb,” said Suarez. “There were commercial-sized gallons of hand sanitizer, which has alcohol in it, generators full of fuel, containers of fuel.”

FOX 13 has reported on previous encampment fires where propane tanks have exploded, including a fire at a homeless camp near I-5. That fire caused extensive damage to nearby vegetation. Luckily, the people living there escaped unharmed.

 

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