[Les Paul]

I was in the control room for the boiler/power generation section of the plant I work at. The day before we'd had a burner tilt malfunction and it had directed the fire box outside of the boiler. Imagine a flame about a foot in diameter cutting through everything in its path for 30 feet. One giant torch melting basically boiler structure. I was making my rounds and discovered it. I ran into the control and explained the situation. We called all the other units and informed them of the crash shutdown about to occur. That was Friday the 13th a bad omen to say the least.

The next day while bringing up some smaller antique boilers, 5 of them, to replace the one we had shut down, we kept hearing safties lifting on those boilers. Very spooky when 600lbs of steam suddenly vents to the atmosphere. At 3:52 we heard a loud explosion. We assumed one of those old boilers had blown up. We looked at our control panels and nothing was amiss. Then 8 seconds later the big one. The first explosion was a 4 inch line in an adjacent unit blowing apart at an elbow spewing pure butane at over 700psi straight toward those old boilers. A 200 foot diameter vapor cloud formed directly over the boilers and an errant spark lit it off. The explosion was estimated to have the energy of 25,000lbs of TNT. To say it was catastrophic would be an understatement.

Our house was 9 miles from the plant. It blew open a solid wood door going from our garage to the kitchen. My wife and daughter thought there had been a nuclear accident at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo. She looked out the window and saw flames shooting 200 feet in the air above our plant. The explosion was heard over 45 miles away, it broke most of the windows on mainstreet downtown which is about 7 miles from the plant.

All communications to the outside world had been severed. Except for 1. In our generator building next to our control room there was another phone line owned by a contractor. I called my wife and told her I was ok but the plant had been leveled and there were raging fires. All of our emergency radios were out so we had no way to communicate to try and coordinate the emergency fire crew. Fires would burn for 2 days before they died out. Luckily being a Saturday there were only about 60-70 people instead of the usual 400+.

Our 35mw generator had not automatically severed itself from the power grid like it was supposed to and had in fact become a motor. It was speeding up and we didn't have an ounce of steam going to it. When those things motorize and come apart they make a hole about 200 ft deep. We got our bunker gear on and made our way over mounds and mounds of debris leading to the fire monitors aimed at the unit where the flames were particuarily bad. The water lines leading to the monitors had been severed and we had no pressure. At that time after 20 or so minutes an order to abandon the plant was given. We'd found 2 guys that didn't make it and they would find another one that night. All friends and good guys. Before we abandoned the plant we thew an emergency switch that finally severed us from the power grid and our generator wound down.

They rebuilt the plant and now 20 years later the technology being as old as it is and with a new plant in China coming on line the plant will shut down within 2 years. I'll make it out with full retirement. I think of the 60-70 guys that were there that day there are only 3 or 4 of us still working out there. My small tribute to those guys and a day I'll never forget.