Texas Tank Explosion Close Call Caught on Tape

DAVE STATTER
STATter911.com

Interview with City of Lamesa Fire Service Manager Kendall Amos along with morning after video

Photographer David Drummond's website with his account and more pictures

Chief Billy Goldfeder at Firefighter Close Calls alerted us to this amazing video from Thursday night. Here's what he wrote:

Lamesa and Andrews (Texas) Firefighters were operating at a tank fire last evening. They had water flowing, attempting to cool. At about 2 hours into it, a relief valve blew ...but then the tank and nearby tanks exploded and took off. The photographer was 200 yards away and a piece of 4" pipe about a foot and a half long with a cutoff valve on it came through the air in a high enough arc that it cleared the power lines next to him in impact the front of his vehicle, causing extensive damage.

One firefighter suffered minor injuries in the incident.

The video was shot by David Drummond who does storm chasing for KCBD-TV. It is believed lightning had hit the tank. Drummond wrote this on his website In The Vortex:

After chasing a wicked hail storm last night in Dawson County (it hailed for an hour and 15 minutes straight!) I heard the call go out for a tank battery fire that was most likely started by lightning. I thought it might make for some good news footage, but little did I know what was in store!

Here is some of the account of City of Lamesa Fire Service Manager Kendall Amos from KCBD-TV's website:

After two hours of fighting the blaze firefighters heard a hissing sound. "I was probably 20 yards from the front of the fire. I saw a couple of guys fall and I was running to try to help get them up," said Amos about the seconds following the explosion. Amos says the chain fence around the salt water disposal site shielded his men from flying debris. "Our people didn't get hit. Our trucks didn't get his. I can't believe it. It was like a grenade going off," said Amos.
Viewing a scene he describes as a war zone, Amos says it wasn't death that scared him. "Really what was going through my mind was not that I'm going to die, but that I'm going to get burned and have to live," he said.

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Permalink Reply by Oldman on May 19, 2009 at 1:51pm

I think Justin will agree that while the potential is always there, a major blow out such as this is extremely rare compared to the number of fires caused by lightning in the West Texas, Eastern New Mexico area. I know when I lived in that part of the world, we worked more heater treater fires than on tank farms.

That being said, should they have thought about exposure cooling? Probably. Perhaps there was complacency because it was a "brine" disposal area, and didn't think about the probability of other substances and gasses being present. Thankfully, everyone went home, the fire went out, and hopefully some lessons have and will be learned after whatever investigation by the powers that be has been completed.

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Permalink Reply by Oldman on May 20, 2009 at 10:08am

Justin, and others,

I was curious why Andrews was called. Did a little research and found out the boom truck was modified by the city of Andrews especially for tank fires. This apparatus is able to apply foam, and dry chemical. So someone has at least thought about this occurring.

After looking at the 2nd video shot by David the day after the fire, there is a shot of empty foam containers. Now whether they were applying foam before or after the BLEVE, I couldn't say. But the destruction is amazing.

http://daviddrummond.com/blog/2009/05/17/lamesa-tx-explosion-afterm...