Explosion at Clinton Township, Mich., vape supplier kills 19-year-old

Explosions at a building that sold vape pens and other supplies sent gas canisters flying as far as a mile — killing a 19-year-old, local officials said.

The man, who has yet to be publicly identified, was standing at a carwash, about a quarter-mile away from the explosion in Clinton Township, Mich., when he was struck by airborne shrapnel from one of the canisters that officials said were illegally stored.

“It basically was a war zone: You had shrapnel going off everywhere you looked,” said Tim Duncan, Clinton Township’s fire chief, at a news conference Tuesday afternoon. Firefighters were still collecting debris from a huge radius, he said.

Earlier, he said some 50 to 60 firefighters had responded to the fire that broke out shortly before 9 p.m. on Monday. One firefighter was injured after a canister smashed through a fire engine’s window.

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The explosions were so loud that Duncan said he could hear them from his home over seven miles away. The fire chief said that continuous blasts prevented firefighters from getting too close. “You could see the amount of fire just coursing in the sky, and the explosions were actually shaking the car — there was that much going on,” he said.

City officials said Tuesday that they were still investigating the exact cause of the blast and fire, including which event triggered the other.

They said the burned-out facility had housed two businesses: Goo Smoke Shop, a tobacco store that sold vapes, and Select Distributors, a wholesale outlet that sold gases and supplies for vaping. Officials said the building was not permitted to store explosive materials on-site.

“They were not allowed to have these canisters,” said Clinton Township Supervisor Bob Cannon at Tuesday’s news conference. “They were illegally in that building.”

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According to Clinton Township’s website, the canisters contain butane, nitrous oxide and lighter fluid, measuring up to 18 inches in size and weighing up to 15 pounds each.

“These things are dangerous,” Cannon said, warning residents not to approach any canisters found strewn across the wide debris field. “There are containers that are still exploding. Not very many, but it’s still dangerous.”

“They had literally received a truckload of butane within the past week, and they still had over half of that left. So this is what you’re seeing strewn throughout the area,” Duncan said.

Police said the site’s owner and employees were undergoing questioning and cooperating with an ongoing investigation. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was also involved in the investigation, officials said.

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According to police, the facility’s owner said the building had also contained around 100,000 vape pens at the time of the blast.

Korey Gaddis told Detroit News that he was driving nearby when he heard multiple explosions on Monday evening. “The next thing we heard was ‘Boom!’ We thought it was car doors slamming until we saw debris flying and I looked back and saw a fire,” he said. “It felt like the ground was shaking and I could feel the heat.”

Another witness driving nearby, Kevin Fester, told the local outlet that he saw hundreds of pieces of metal shrapnel scattered across the suburban area that ranged in size from the equivalent of a spray can to the size of a car’s steering wheel. “It was heavy stuff and it was all charred black,” he said. “I guarantee you … if that came flying through the air at any velocity at all, it would just shatter your head like nothing.”

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Duncan, the fire chief, said it was miraculous that more people weren’t hurt by the canisters, which emergency workers continued to discover Tuesday a mile from the explosion site, embedded in buildings and roofs. “If that thing’s coming, it’s gonna hit you in the face, hit you in the chest, hit you somewhere on the body, you’re going to suffer some severe consequences,” Duncan said. “Somebody was looking out for us. That’s all I’m gonna say.”

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