Letter: Fire district needs new propane detectors

Published 1:30 am Saturday, July 11, 2026

Editor,

This is unbelievable. My wife and I smelled a slight odor of propane this past weekend. We wound up calling 911 and a fire truck from South Whidbey Fire and EMS came out quickly. Two firefighters checked out our furnace closet and other places and said that they couldn’t detect any leak. What they didn’t tell us was that their detection devices couldn’t detect propane.

By contrast, an employee from our propane supplier Vanderyacht Propane had a device that detected the propane leak that we smelled.

I did talk with the assistant chief, who told me that the fire district is held to a different standard than propane companies for propane detectors. Regardless, in South Whidbey where the vast majority of homes use propane, we think it is a necessity for the local fire department to have devices that can detect propane.

We don’t understand what South Whidbey Fire and EMS is waiting for.

Paul Goldfinger

Langley