A fire engulfed a small 24 foot travel trailer located inside a trailer park on Ocean Boulevard late Friday morning. One woman was sent to Bay Area Hospital with burns and later flown to Portland and listed in serious condition. World Photo by Madeline Steege

A Coos Bay woman sustained severe burns to her arms and face Friday morning after propane fumes lingering in her camp trailer first ignited, then exploded just moments after she ran outside.

“She came out of the house on fire,” said Julie Blais, a neighbor who took care of the burn victim, 41-year-old Mary McKay, for several minutes until paramedics arrived.

According to Coos Bay Fire Department officials, at 10:34 a.m., about 18 firefighters and two fire engines responded to a report of an explosion and fire at the M'Ocean Trailer Park near the 2500 block of Ocean Boulevard. When firefighters arrived they discovered McKay's 24-foot camp trailer was fully engulfed in flames and McKay outside suffering from second- and third-degree burns.

McKay told fire officials she smelled propane shortly before the explosion. Fire officials said an investigation into the cause of the fire revealed the occupants had attempted to light a propane fueled appliance, were unsuccessful, but failed to turn it off.

The vapors were later ignited by an electric space heater.

Firefighters brought the fire under control within 10 minutes. At around 10:45 a.m., two firefighters walked atop the charred remains of the trailer, intermittently spraying water on smoldering hotspots, but mainly chucking scorched and smoking debris onto the lawn. The trailer's roof was nonexistent and two walls remained standing, although virtually everything within sight appeared melted or seared to a crisp.

The fire completely destroyed the trailer and everything inside, fire officials said and estimated the total damage to the structure and its contents at $7,500.

The loss was not covered by insurance, they said.

Neighbors in this trailer park community, mainly filled with manufactured homes, stood milling around near the site, aghast at the site where the trailer once stood. They traded stories about what they saw and heard, as fire crews worked around the site where smoke continued to periodically billow.

“I just heard a big boom,” said Dorothy Buford, a neighbor who lives in an aquamarine-colored trailer 50 yards from where the explosion occurred.

Blais, 65, was one of the first to the scene and assisted McKay, who had walked 25 yards to a neighbor's for help.

“She kept saying, ‘Hurry, hurry, please. I hurt,'” Blais said.

While McKay waited for medical help to arrive, she used the neighbor's faucet to pour cool water on her burned arms.

“Her arms were peeling,” Blais said, noting that portions of the woman's blonde hair had been burned black. “Her face was all burned. Her skin was all burned.”

At one point, Blais said McKay said, “Get me a Coke.”

Blais obliged, and poured the cola into McKay's mouth. The home where McKay received the initial treatments was one that McKay frequented often, Blais said.

“They came over to help her a lot,” Blais said of McKay and a friend who also lived in the camp trailer.

The sound of the explosion is what drew Blais out of her home.

“Oh, the boom was huge,” Blais said. “But we get gunshots out here all the time. And you hear sonic booms. We thought it was a sonic boom. Oh, it was loud!”

Blais said the couple had two black kittens and that at least one had survived because she had seen it slinking around the park after the fire was out.

McKay was initially taken to Bay Area Hospital, but later was flown to Legacy Emmanuel Hospital and Health Center in Portland.

A nursing supervisor at Emmanuel said that McKay was listed in serious condition.