WE NEED ICE - Explosion on the Railroad Meg Maran

On July 5th, 1973, the, “We Need Ice” message was broadcast across a dedicated Kingman Arizona radio station. The local hospital requesting ice cubes from residents’ freezers? What on earth for?It was for the bodies. The dozens of human bodies burned alive from a railcar propane explosion, also known as a BLEVE. If you know anything about burn injuries, you know they are the most devastating to the body and the most excruciating in pain. The ice was for the bodies. The bodies that were still ...

One Doxol worker is dead from the explosion atop rail car #38214 which occurred on July 5, 1973 in Kingman, Arizona.Kingman Firefighters, mostly volunteers, race to the scene to extinguish the fire and prevent another propane accident. Time is not on their side as the tank car, full of flammable gas, sits burning in the hundred-degree desert. Town residents and travelers along Route 66 begin to corral around the flaming tanker.In his testimonial, Kingman Firefighter, Oscar Lopez recounts the ...

A man lies in the street, arms stretched out as he tries to crawl to safety. Pain and fear are conveyed across his badly burned face, totally black, just a thin mohawk of singed hair runs down the center of his crown. His pants have been mostly burned off him and the skin on his exposed limbs can only be described as paper mache’-like, pieces of flesh dangling loosely.Witness and Kingman resident, “K,” wastes no time jumping into her role during the disaster aftermath. She rushes to the count...

The death toll rises each day for the small town of Kingman, Arizona in the weeks following July 5, 1973.Witness and hospital volunteer, “K,” remembers how fellow Kingman residents stepped up to care for the children of those families whose head-of-households were either injured or deceased. She engages in one of the hardest conversations of her life, when the young daughter of a burned firefighter innocently repeats what she’s hearing from her peers. “Someone said my Daddy’s a DEAD MAN...

Amongst the scandals, crime and natural disasters occurring and being packaged in today’s news stories, editorials and talk shows for public review, there’s always the 64-thousand-dollar question: Who is at fault? Someone has to pay, and especially when lives are lost.Video footage surfaces showing the town of Kingman post BLEVE of 1973 - Doxol branded trucks and gas storage tanks parked on the industrial plant’s property, giant pieces of metal shrapnel from the exploding tanker block Route 6...

If necessity is the mother of invention, then mass casualties are the catalyst of reinvention. If anything positive was going to come out of this disaster, it was going to be improving practices for managing such events in order to avoid repeating history.9-11 has been brought up, more than once, with witness accounts of the Kingman Bleve. After September 11, 2001, changes were employed for safer air travel. Similarly, the 1973 Kingman BLEVE influenced protocols for transporting liquid gas, f...