RIVERTON ROSE TRAIL – An early morning fire consumed 11 camp trailers and a fishing boat today in Western Colbert County. No one was hurt in the inferno.
It is too early in the year for most residents to show up, so the facility, Spring Valley Campground was largely unpopulated. However, some of the camper owners were at the site evaluating the damage when the morning sun broke. “We were here until about 11 o’clock last night,” one of the tenants told the Quad-Cities Daily. She didn’t want to be identified, and continued, “It was really quiet last night. Thank heavens nobody was over there (the burned-out trailers) when the fire started!”
Evidently, one of the campers caught fire for an as-yet unknown reason about 1:30 or 2:00am. Explosion started rocking the neighborhood a little after 2:00. These campers and trailers all use bottled propane gas for their heat and cooking fuel. As the photos show, the campers are really close to one another. As each trailer’s propane tank heated up and blew it’s safety-release valve, the fire apparently walked through the cluster, destroying each trailer in succession. The inferno was intense, as the twisted and melted metal shows.
