A service station owner was caught cleaning up diesel stains next to his fuel pumps by dousing the ground with petrol.
CCTV showed Ron Carrison casually spraying petrol around the Mobil station on Main Street in Barisdale, Victoria, like he was watering a garden.
The rogue businessman even cajoled his teenage employees to follow suit and abused them as ‘lazy’ if they thought it was too dangerous.
A service station owner was caught cleaning up diesel stains next to his fuel pumps by dousing the ground with petrol
Security cameras showed the risky cleaning method was even done while customers filled up their cars just metres away.
Some of the areas doused in petrol were next to where customers or workers from nearby businesses would go to smoke cigarettes.
The Environmental Protection Agency previously warned Mr Carrison not to clean up stains with petrol, but it seemed he didn’t listen.
‘EPA has previously advised the operator of his obligations. In light of this new vision EPA will be revisiting the matter,’ the agency told A Current Affair.
Former policeman Glen Trevaskis said the highly explosive petrol fumes just needed one spark to ignite and potentially make the whole station explode.
‘This is a disaster waiting to happen, I can’t believe it hasn’t happened yet. We’ve got regulations to stop this sort of thing but Ron just doesn’t care,’ he said.
CCTV showed Ron Carrison casually spraying petrol around the Mobil station on Main Street in Barisdale, Victoria, like he was watering a garden
Mr Carrison (pictured) even cajoled his teenage employees to follow suit and abused them as ‘lazy’ if they thought it was too dangerous
Mr Trevaskis’ schoolboy son Jack said Mr Carrison bullied him while he worked there after class, often doing work still in his school uniform.
The 17-year-old said his boss would spray up to 2.5 litres of petrol at a time in his obsession to remove diesel stains from the driveways next to pumps.
‘I knew the danger but at the same time I needed the money,’ he said.
Mr Trevaskis claimed his son was even forced to clean an entire storage shed using petrol, without any protective gear.
Another teenager, Dom, who worked there with Jack and another boy Callum, said he was called a ‘f**king lazy c**t’ for refusing to spray petrol.
All three said Mr Carrison would fly into a rage if they didn’t clean up spills with petrol and consistently abused them.
He claimed to only spray a little petrol on the ground at close range and immediately wipe it up, saying ‘it’s not dangerous, there’s nothing wrong with it’
After initially refusing to talk to ACA, or Mr Trevaskis who demanded to know why his son’s life was endangered, Mr Carrison finally emerged from inside.
He claimed to only spray a little petrol on the ground at close range and immediately wipe it up, saying ‘it’s not dangerous, there’s nothing wrong with it’.
Despite CCTV recordings showing him spraying petrol in the air in large quantities, he claimed to never do that.
The petrol station is next door to a bottle shop, Domino’s Pizza outlet, and a family motel, with the local police station 40m away.
All of them would likely be destroyed and their occupants potentially killed if the the petrol station spectacularly exploded.