Gasoline Bulk Storage Plant Fire BLEVE 1959 Kansas City

In August 1959 the Kansas City Fire Department was hit with their largest loss of in the line of duty deaths to date, when a 25,000 gallon gas tank exploded during a fire on Southwest Boulevard killing five firefighters. This was the first time BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Evaporating Vapor Explosion) was used to describe a burning fuel tank. This video shows firemen in Kansas City, Kansas, in a desperate 6-hour battle with a raging gasoline fire that starts at a bulk service station, and touches off huge storage tanks, sending flames hundreds of feet in the air and rocking the city. In 1991, the Firefighters Fountain was dedicated at 31st Street and Broadway in Penn Valley Park to all firefighters who have fallen in the line of duty throughout the city's history. A Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion or BLEVE (pronounced "BLEV-ee") can occur when fire heats and weakens the walls of a storage tank, particularly in the region above the stored liquid where cooling is less effective. At some point the weakened tank can no longer withstand the internal pressure and the tank fails
catastrophically, often sending fragments in many directions. The essential features of a BLEVE are (1) the vessel fails, (2) the failure results in a flash-off of vapour from the superheated liquid and, if the liquid is flammable, (3) the vapour ignites and forms a fireball. BLEVEs can take place rapidly when a fire is impinging on the surface of a non-fireproofed propane tank above the liquid level of the tank. According to the American Petroleum Institute, this type of storage tank usually ruptures violently after 10-30 minutes of direct exposure to flame if water is not applied to cool the tank.The API also notes that some tanks have ruptured after only 10 minutes of exposure to flame.45 The quickness with which a BLEVE can occur is very important for fire fighters to consider when deciding how they will respond to a propane tank fire. If too much time has elapsed, the best action fire fighters can take may be to retreat to a safe distance. For more on BLEVEs, go to the Chemical Safety Board website at http://www.csb.gov/assets/document/Final_Herrig.pdf . This is taken from the Universal Newsreel Volume 32, Release 67, 08/20/1959 available at the US National Archives in College Park, Maryland.

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• Gasoline
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• hydrocarbons
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• Hazwoper
• training
• BLEVE
• vapor
• boiling
• liquid
• explosion
• chemical
• board
• CSB

[PoppaBlue59]

@Petri547 Firefighting foam has been around since before world war two. It was used primarily for fighting aircraft fires back then. KCFD had foam...they just didn't have enough for a fire of that magnatude.

[Petri547]

They didn't have foam in those days for gasolin/liquid fires.Our modern water tank trucks are usually having 10,000 litres of water and 1,000 litres of foam.And dispatch can call an airport fire truck at the scene,if the scene is nearby,like an industrial fire at Kelatie,which occurred this summer.