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Jul 24, 2008 9:37 pm US/Central
Fire and Metal Rains On Dallas: 1 Year later
A Look Back at the Southwest Industrial Gas Plant Explosion
DALLAS (CBS 11 News) ―
Hickory House BBQ is still there and so is the liquor store. Both survived, after a third business nearly burned them down.
"We had a bottle fly over us. We we're too close," said Deputy Chief Harold Holland, Dallas Fire and Rescue.
Holland was one of the first firefighters on scene when Southwest Industrial Gases exploded into a ball of fire. Holland knew it was a gas plant, but that's all he knew.
"One of the things we didn't have on scene was a Hazmat team," he said. "That's what I wanted first."
With canisters and acetylene tanks launching like missiles, Holland realized it was simply too dangerous. "We'll let it burn. We can't go in. The thing I needed to do is get the freeways shut down and to back everybody off," he said.
Battalion Chief Allan Springer also remembers the flying debris that could have easily killed someone.
"My feet hit the ground and immediately the bottles started blowing up," he said. "We had one come behind the chief's car and sheared off the top of a telephone pole."
It sounds unusual, but firefighters are thankful they didn't arrive sooner, before things really got going. "If we would have gotten there are little earlier and got closer to survey the situation, somebody could have been hurt," said Springer.
It took emergency crews longer than normal to shut down I-30 and I-35 in Downtown Dallas. For at least 20 minutes, drivers dodged chunks of metal that rained from the sky.
A year has passed and business could not be any worse at Hickory House BBQ. With Southwest Industrial out of business, customers have vanished just as quickly.
"Right now it's just dead. It's really bad. Business has been off by at least 30 or 40 percent," said Mohamed Kassam, the owner of the restaurant.
Dallas firefighters say they're amazed no one died in the massive explosion. However, two workers at the plant received serious injuries. They were unavailable for comment due to pending litigation and confidentiality agreements.
Firefighters say if they had to do it again, they would ask for three things. Better communication among emergency crews, a faster way to shutdown the freeways and better insight into what confronted them when they arrived on scene.
The NTSB has yet to release its final report on what caused the fire.
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