Water-contaminated fuel at an Esso station in Selkirk, Man., caused some customers’ cars to break down shortly after fuelling over the long weekend.
Brandon resident Tim Case said he was in Selkirk with his wife and daughter to see family but things went south after his daughter went out to get gas on Sunday afternoon.
“She phoned us in a panic saying her car started shuddering and died in the middle of the highway. So I jumped in the vehicle right away to go out and find her.”
Case said his daughter was stranded on Route 9 and couldn’t move the car out of the lane, he said he was able to push it off the road. He then went back to the station to notify the owner of the issue. “I said, well, you should be shutting those pumps down then – obviously there’s a problem.”
Case’s daughter was just one of many to get the faulty fuel. He said while they were waiting to get towed they met a couple on the highway experiencing the same problem.
Due to the incident, Case said he and his wife have now lost two days of work. “We’re supposed to go back to Brandon last night, so we had to stay overnight. We’ll be here all day today and possibly all day tomorrow.”
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The owner of the gas station told Global News that the pumps were shut down Monday morning once it was clear the fuel was causing problems.
Furthermore, they said they are collecting information from the people affected to submit to MPI.
Local mechanic Mike Timlick advises anyone in this situation to get it taken care of right away to avoid long-term problems.
“There’s a couple of ways of doing that, I mean you can drain all the gas out of the tank or you can pull the fuel line off and run the pump,” said Timlick who is also the owner of the Auto Centre at The Bay in Winnipeg.
“Water will go to the lowest point in the tank and your fuel pump will pump the water out first and when you start seeing gas coming out you know you’ve gotten the water out.”
Repair teams are at the gas station to pump the water out of the tank and the drivers are still waiting to see the extent of the damage and the potential hit to the wallet it may come with. It is unknown how the water got into the tanks.
— with files from Global’s Katherine Dornian
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