?WOODLEAF — Gasoline vapors from a fuel pump caused an explosion and fire Wednesday at a garage on Echo Drive, fire officials said Thursday.
The fire occurred at a home off Potneck Road where Mike Walls and another man were repairing a minivan inside the metal structure. The garage was several feet from the home Walls and his wife, Linda, share.
The men were working on a fuel pump in the minivan. The gasoline vapors from the fuel pump ignited near a wood stove causing an explosion and fire, said Deborah Horne, a fire inspector and investigator for the Rowan County Fire Marshal’s Office.
Horne said when they hit the wood stove, the vapors exploded and caused the fire.
Someone was taken by personal vehicle to the hospital, Horne said, with injuries that weren’t life-threatening.
Linda Walls said her husband and friend were singed and weren’t able to immediately hear, but were fine. The two men saw smoke and left the garage before it exploded, Walls said.
The home sits far off Echo Drive beyond Lucy Lake and Burgray roads.
By the time firefighters from Franklin, Locke, Woodleaf and Jerusalem fire departments arrived, the structure was already engulfed.