Natural gas leak caused fire at truck maintenance business, official says

A leak on a big rig that ran on natural gas led to a fire that caused more than $2 million in damage and losses at a truck maintenance facility in southwest Wichita on Monday, fire officials said.

A fire at Fleet Maintenance Inc. in the 3700 block of West 30th Street South caused $1.5 million in damage to the building and $750,000 in losses of building contents, Wichita fire Lt. Jose Ocadiz said Tuesday.

Employees were doing mechanical work on a tractor-trailer fueled by compressed natural gas when a gas leak reached a heater inside the building and started the fire, Ocadiz said.

“The employees were in working on some vehicles at the time and then they heard a big boom and an immediate fire,” Wichita fire Chief Tammy Snow said Monday.

Three employees were injured, with two treated at the scene by paramedics and one taken to a hospital, Snow said. Two employees were treated for burns while the third had unknown injuries, Ocadiz said. It is not known where the employees were when the fire started.

Owner Stan Furgason said Monday that what mattered was all the employees and his dogs survived the fire. The company, which fixes large trucks and semis, employs 22, but not all worked on Monday, Furgason said.

The building’s structural integrity became a safety concern as part of the building collapsed toward the end of the fire, but no one was injured in the collapse, Ocadiz said.

This story was originally published January 16, 2018 at 12:22 PM with the headline "Natural gas leak caused fire at truck maintenance business, official says."