Grandmother escapes bizarre backyard blast from aerosol can

Connie Doyle, 86, appreciates peace and quiet two days later.

"This is our hangout, on the back porch," she said, on Thursday, June 7.

It's where she admires colorful blooms each day.

"I love flowers," she continued.

But Tuesday, a bizarre explosion on that same porch shattered her solitude.

"All of a sudden, I hear this 'pop,'" said neighbor Lori Duffy.

"It was very loud," said Doyle. "It sounded like a gun."

Her security system detected the blast and alerted her grandson, Zech Fry, at work.

"The clip came up after about a minute," he said. "You get a little notification, and I'm like - wow."

Twisted metal is all that's left of the aerosol can of wheel cleaner. Sunshine apparently heated it in a box on a nearby bench for about 45 minutes.

"If it had hit me on the face, it could have killed me," Doyle said.

Watching the video still makes her flinch.

"It scares me now when I think about it."

Firefighters say this kind of thing is rare. But they advise keeping aerosols away from heat or flame sources.

In addition, never store pressurized containers in locations above 120 degrees.

Within the strange images, there's a lesson.

"It does prove that some things get hot, and they can blow up," said Duffy.

Fry, understandably, is glad that his grandmother wasn't injured.

"There's a lot more pressure to these, really enough to hurt somebody if you're close enough to it," he said.

After 52 years in her home, Connie Doyle is back on the porch and admiring her flowers.

"I feel very fortunate," she concluded.