Kingman BLEVE: The Tank Car Explosion of Nineteen Seventy-Three
Near Chloride, Arizona
On July fifth, nineteen seventy-three, a railroad tank car filled with liquid propane sat on a spur in Kingman, Arizona on one of the hottest days of the year. Workers were unloading the car when fire broke out. What happened next is now a textbook case in fire safety training.
The intense heat caused the tank's pressure to rise faster than its relief valve could vent. At roughly one-thirty in the afternoon the tank exploded in what engineers call a boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion, or BLEVE. The blast killed thirteen people, eleven of them firefighters who had moved in close to fight the initial blaze. More than one hundred others were injured. The fireball could be seen for miles.
The Kingman disaster directly shaped how fire departments across the country train to handle hazardous-materials incidents, and it led to stricter protocols for keeping emergency responders at a safe distance from pressurized tank cars.
