Kingman BLEVE Jessica Cousins
The beginnings of hazmat incorporated into the fire service. 11 firefighters and one emoployee killed, several onlookers injured/burned.
The Kingman BLEVE was a catastrophic Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion (BLEVE). This event happened on July 5, 1973 in Kingman, Arizona. During a propane transfer tank car #38214 was leased from Williams Energy Company on the Santa Fe Railroad. The tanker carried 33,000 gals of propane gas which was to be transferred to storage tanks 75 yards away. The incident occurred near the Droxol Gas Western Energy Company bulk plant 2512 East Highway Route 66 in the Hiltop buisness district on Kingmans south side.
The explosion shook the entire town of 7,500people and the shockwave was reportedly heard and felt up to 5 miles away. A huge fireball over 1,000 ft in diameter was also seen from far away. After the explosion the 3- ton end of the half inch thick metal tanker landed a quarter mile down the tracks and left a 10 ft deep crater where it had been sitting.
Flaming propane sprayed by the explosion ignited several buildings near by. The initial Fire badly burned the two employees, one who died several days later from his wounds. The three firefighters closest to the explosion were instantly killed. Over 90 onlookers gathered at the highway were burned or injured
Because of the incident it's now studied in fire department training programs worldwide. After the explosion the fire code became an instant issue and now require all bulk storage tanks to be diked and to have some sort of foam fire extinguisher. Also standard procedure for handling BLEVEs became well known in fire departments. The Kingman BLEVE was the worst firefighter tragedy in Arizona until 2013 when 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots firefighters were killed in the Yarnell Hill fire which was a wildfire caused by lightening
The 11 firefighters killed were William L. Cason, Myron B. Cox, Roger A. Hub ka, Joseph M. Chambers the 3rd, Marvin E. mast, Arthur C. stringer, Christopher G. Sanders, Richard Lee Williams, Frank S. Henry, John O. Campbell, Donald G. Webb, Alan Hensen
Pros and cons: pros would be that the fire department did a good job responding quickly and did a good job working with and coming to get her with a lot of other groups to put the fire out ( bureau of land management, Air Force, etc.) cons I would say they didn't do good enough job setting up zones, they should've looked in the book to see how long the tank took until BLEVE
- Bib/ citations
- Http://www.firehouse.com/article/10544591/the-Kingman-rail-car-bleve
- Http://www.firefighternation.com/article/news-2/Kingman-BLEVE-40-years-later
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/kingman_explosion
- Http://kingmanhistoricdistric.com/points-of-interest/firefighters-memorial-park/the-disaster-story.htm