(The following story by Alicia Ebaugh appeared on the Sioux City Journal website on August 2.)
SIOUX CENTER, Iowa — Static electricity sparked the explosion of a semi tanker truck Tuesday afternoon in downtown Sioux Center, state and local fire marshals determined Wednesday.
Officials said the driver of the truck was severely burned and remains in critical but stable condition at St. Elizabeth Regional Medical Center’s burn unit in Lincoln, Neb. They did not release the identity of the driver.
Annetta Lammers of Alton, Iowa, confirmed Wednesday in a phone interview with the Journal that the driver was her son, Dennis Lammers, also of Alton.
As of Wednesday morning, Lammers said, her son was on a respirator, but was responsive and had feeling in his feet. She said his feet and head suffered the least amount of burns.
Lammers said her son has been married for 37 years and has two daughters and two sons. One of his daughters, she said, is an Army reservist serving her second tour of duty in Iraq. Lammers said she will be coming home to be with the family.
Lammers described her son as mechanically inclined. She said he has been a truck driver all of his life, and also managed a Co-op station.
“I’m sure he will fight through it,” she said.
Investigators found static electricity buildup ignited gasoline vapors as the liquid was being loaded from a rail car to the tanker, said Sioux Center Fire Department spokesman David Krahling.
“Static electricity comes from a variety of sources,” Krahling said. “It’s not uncommon for some to develop while fluid is pumped from rail cars.”
The tanker, owned by Sioux Tank Line of Orange City, Iowa, was to deliver the gasoline for Siouxland Energy and Livestock Cooperative of Sioux Center, he said. The blast happened around 4:45 p.m. between two tracks on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail line behind the Centre Mall in the downtown area.
The aluminum truck trailer melted in the four-hour blaze, leaving behind only its charred skeleton. Heat damage also blistered a few nearby rail cars.
At a press conference Wednesday morning, Sioux Center Fire Chief Dave Van Holland, Sioux Center Police Chief Paul Adkins and Deputy State Fire Marshal David Schipper shared more details about the harrowing experience for the town of about 6,700. Leaping flames radiating intense heat and the proximity of more explosive substances made the situation extremely dangerous for firefighters and nearby citizens, Schipper said.
“There were nine cars with gasoline inside of them on the west track, and 13 cars with ethanol inside of them on the other,” he said. There were also 18 stationary tanks containing anhydrous ammonia situated not too far away. “If it had been worse, we could have had rail cars flying in all different directions, up to a half-mile away depending on how much flammable material was inside.”
Ripping through the air with a roaring boom, the explosion drew the attention of firefighters and nearly every Sioux Center resident before the call even came through, Krahling said.
“We could feel the ground shake underneath our chairs” during the Sioux Center City Council meeting being held in City Hall when the blast occurred, he said. “Then we heard another boom … we all figured something was going wrong.”
Firefighters’ initial attack was to set up aerial guns that jetted water more than 30 feet into the heart of the fire, cooling the rail cars surrounding the explosion to make sure they didn’t explode, too, Van Holland said.
“If those rail cars would have exploded, this building would probably not be here. I’m not gonna lie,” he said of City Hall.
Within 15 minutes the police department was notified to evacuate businesses and homes within a half-mile radius of the site, Adkins said. The city manager and mayor got involved in the process with police, fire and emergency response personnel going door-to-door and telling people to move as far away as they could.
“Dordt College was kind enough to house people who didn’t have anywhere else to go” in its recreation center, he said. About 150 people took advantage of that.
U.S. Highway 75, which passes within two blocks of the site, was closed in that area for that time, as well.
Police manned roadblocks and did patrols through the empty neighborhoods as firefighters continued to fight the blaze. One of the rail cars began leaking gasoline through a release valve, Schipper said, causing an extra worry. The Sioux City Fire Department HAZMAT team came in to dig small reservoirs to catch the gas, however.
More than 100 firefighters from six surrounding cities eventually descended on the site and extinguished the fire completely around 9:30 p.m. Everyone except those who lived within six blocks of the explosion site were allowed to return home, and those people spent the night with family or friends, Adkins said.
All three officals credited the relatively small amount of damage and the safety of those who had to be evacuated to quick thinking by fire, police and emergency response personnel. Everyone was evacuated within a half an hour of starting notification, Adkins said, and no one besides the truck’s driver was injured.
Employees at the nearby Farmer’s Co-op Society attempted to help remove the burning clothing from the victim’s body before he was taken to Sioux Center Community Hospital, Krahling said. He was then flown by air ambulance to Mercy Medical Center — Sioux City. Although Lammers was able to walk away from the explosion, he was severely burned, said SELC general manager Bernie Punt.
Unloading product directly from rail cars is a common practice, Punt said, and the trucking company’s drivers receive HAZMAT training on how to do that correctly. Lammers had just gone through a refresher course on the training within the last 10 days, he said.
No other information on the driver or the trucking company was available.
The Iowa Occupational Safety and Health Administration office has not initiated an inspection of the company’s safety procedures at this point, said executive director Jens Nissen. However, more information is still coming in to the agency, he said.