"Small Town, Big Blast"

SMALL TOWN, BIG BLAST

August 2008

The first blast shattered one wall of the propane company’s garage and office building and set the rest ablaze. Quickly, the adjacent home of company manager Paul Frickey was also in flames.

The second blast, which destroyed a tanker truck containing a thousand gallons of liquefied petroleum gas, blew Soldotna Fire Chief Harold Jackson off his feet nearly 30 yards away, and rocked the entire city of Soldotna with its concussive force.

Caught in a low-lying area between their nearby homes, Verona Wilson and Vera Howarth were caught by the ignition of the heavier-than-air gas and were burned about the legs, hands and face.

Students at Soldotna Elementary School, more than half a mile distant, had just been excused for the day by the 3:30 bell and were spilling out onto the playground when they heard the blast and saw the giant plume of black smoke fill the afternoon sky behind the leafless trees on the horizon.

It was Nov. 25, 1968, and less than a quarter-mile northeast along the Sterling Highway, Al Hershberger was at his television and electronics shop when everything blew.

“I was standing by the door,” Hershberger said. “My back was turned when it actually blew. And I immediately turned around and saw everything blowing up down there…. I saw the hood of what turned out to be a pickup flying across the road. And I saw big pieces of wood. Those turned out to be the garage door when I went over and looked at it. I saw those flying clear across the road.”

The heat from the conflagration was so intense that it melted power lines and knocked out electricity from Kasilof north to the outskirts of Kenai, and east all the way to Sterling.

Windows were blown out of nearby buildings, two 700-gallon tanks of propane were destroyed, and in the aftermath of the main explosions nearly 20 80-gallon tanks occasionally detonated like small bombs.

Volunteer firefighters, first from Soldotna and then from Kenai, began rushing to the scene within 10 minutes and were able to save Wilson’s Soldotna Store with jets of water from high-pressure hoses.

The problem had begun that afternoon when a local delivery driver for the Petrolane business—located ironically on what are now the grounds of the Soldotna Fire Department—pulled in with his small truck and connected his tank to the fuel line of the big tanker. After he had filled his own tank with propane, according to Hershberger, he “forgot to unhook the hose and drove away and tore the valve off the truck.”

“And all that propane leaked out (of the big tank), and it was laying on the ground,” he said.

Hershberger said he believes that the driver immediately knew what he had done because he turned around and came back to warn people in the area. Don Wilson (Verona’s husband) and others hurried to shut off pilot lights—anything that might create ignition—and everyone attempted to move away from the greatest concentration of the invisible fuel.

No one, Hershberger said, is really sure what triggered the initial explosion, but the fire from the first blast certainly set off the second, and then the sky filled with flames and smoke.

Remarkably, no one died in all the fiery chaos that followed, and Wilson and Howarth’s burns were the only injuries.

Perhaps even more remarkably, quick and risky work by the emergency-response teams prevented the scene from becoming much, much worse.

After volunteer firefighters had sprayed a second large tanker, Kenai Fire Chief Frank Wisecarver crawled beneath it and closed open valves to cut off the flow of fuel. Nearby were five additional 1,000-gallon tanks and an even larger tank containing 8,000 gallons.

It took several hours to quell the flames and begin to assess all the damage, and emergency teams labored well into the early winter evening. In the end, Wilson and Howarth spent time in a hospital, Howarth for the longer period since her burns were more severe.

The Frickey home was obliterated, and Marion Frickey visited the scene the next day, searching for any valuables that might have escaped the fire. Hershberger remembered that she “found a handful of melted coins,” and very little else.

Two days later, on Nov. 27, the local twice-weekly newspaper, The Cheechako News, featured a banner headline in type two inches high that proclaimed, “BLAST RAZES GAS FACILITY.” Photographs in that issue and the one of Nov. 29 showed buildings in flames, the silhouettes of firefighters at work, vehicles on fire, and plenty of smoldering remnants.

Early December issues featured advertisements for benefit dinners and activities to help the homeless Frickeys. And months later, a trial was avoided when Howarth and Wilson settled out of court with the Petrolane Alaska Gas Services Company.