Tacoma Propane Explosion
Fire filled the sky over Tacoma's Nalley Valley industrial
area Saturday afternoon, 10/06/2007, when a tanker-truck
explosion at a foundry sent flames reportedly as high as 1,000
feet in the air.
This video shows two views of the explosion at Atlas Castings & Technology
that sent four people to
the hospital, closed a major highway and backed up traffic on
nearby roads.
A fire at the foundry was still burning late Saturday night, and
firefighters were working to cool additional propane tanks on
site so they would not blow up.
"What happens is in a contained vessel, if you have a product
inside boil and then expand and there is nowhere for it to go —
if it doesn't release fast enough — that's where you get the
explosion," said Jolene Davis, deputy chief of the Tacoma Fire
Department. "So we are still concerned. ... It's not like a
structure fire where the risk kind of goes down."
The nearly three dozen Atlas employees working Saturday were
accounted for, fire officials said.
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