States face a growing danger as cannabis is now legal for medical or recreational use. Hash oil, known as “honey oil,” is extracted from marijuana plants using butane, a colorless, highly flammable gas. Vapors from butane can release gas clouds, and a mere spark of static electricity can set off a fiery explosion. Some processors use another gas such as propane.
Butane Hash Oil explosions, also called BHO or “honey oil” explosions, are a devastating side effect of marijuana normallization and expansion. Fires occur at extraction labs for making “dabs,” “wax,” “shatter,” and vapes, more frequently on the west coast. https://www.naddi.org/or-explosions-and-house-fire-caused-by-illegal-butane-hash-oil-operation/.)
Butane hash oil explosions or marijuana grow house fires have caused at least 70 deaths since 2011, but the real number is probably over 100.
Hundreds of workers, nearby neighbors, and firefighters ended up in hospitals or trauma burn centers for treatment. Firefighters have died, too, including two in New York.
Explosions can happen at homes, apartment buildings, hotels, trailer parks, indoor marijuana farms, and factories. They take place at both legal and illegal labs.
The worst of the BHO fires have displaced hundreds of people. Among them was a fire in Rancho Cordova, CA on January 22, 2014. Two men started a BHO fire in one apartment, and 146 people from 50 units were displaced.
In Battle Creek, MI—July 22, 2018, a massive fire displaced about 80 people in a four-story apartment building. (See https://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/story/news/2018/09/19/charges-considered-village-inn-apartment-fire/1358037002/.)
Walnut Creek, CA — October 31, 2014. Dozens of people were displaced as fire ripped through six different buildings. (See https://abc7news.com/explosion-destroy-apartments-sunnyvale-avenue/375008/.)
Bellevue, WA, November 5, 2013. The fire lasted seven hours, and it took 100 firefighters and police officers to put it out. One woman died. All 10 apartments were destroyed, causing $1.5 million in property damage and $500,000 worth of belongings. (See https://poppot.org/2015/11/05/bellevues-massive-fire-two-years-later-bho/.)
Four BHO explosions occurred in Colorado within one week of April 2014. In one case, responders rescued an infant and a 4-year-old from a townhome, after a father had been making BHO in the kitchen. (See Chapter
In August of 2019, when forest fires were devastating Oregon, at least one fire was sparked by a BHO explosion. A man from Pennsylvania was running the lab. (See https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2019/08/jackson-county-wildfire-caused-by-butane-hash-oil-lab-blast-officials-say.html.)
According to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the first report of an illicit hash oil lab was in Oakland in 2005. By 2013, the U.S. Fire Administration warned that explosions from hash oil production were increasing. Many labs are discovered only when they catch fire.
In 2017 the DEA recorded fire or explosions in 10% of all illegal extraction labs nationwide. Increasingly, law enforcement tries to take out the labs before they can explode. Reuters
Although legalization states enacted stricter laws against the perpetrators who start these fires and some jurisdictions banned the sale of butane, BHO labs still operate and explosions are not infrequent. Those who cause the fires accidentally may be charged with arson in Oregon and Washington. In California, it is now an aggravated felony to make BHO in the vicinity of children.
In Michigan’s rural northeast corner, the Huron Undercover Narcotics Team routinely finds hash oil equipment when it raids illegal growing operations. “The more people grow marijuana, the more people are going to experiment with this kind of thing and the more explosions and deaths we’re going to see.” Detective Lieutenant Stuart
At two of Northern California’s major burn treatment centers, UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento and Shriners Hospitals for Children, Northern California, injuries from butane hash-oil explosions account for 8% to 10% of severe burn cases, a larger percentage than car wrecks and house fires combined.
Dr. David Greenhalgh, an expert in BHO burns, treated 68 children for BHO burn between 2011 and 2014, the average with burns on 28% of the body. (See https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article2605552.html.)
“The results were that many of these occupancies contained hazardous materials storage, compressed gas cylinders, suspected cannabis operations, excessive storage, access challenges, and other adverse conditions deemed to be hazardous towards firefighter safety.” On May 16, 2020 a cannabis manufacturing plant exploded in Los Angeles. There were 230 firefighters battling the blaze, and 12 firefighters…