Marshalls Creek Explosion and Hazmat Law

On June twenty-sixth, nineteen sixty-four, a burning tractor-trailer exploded on the highway here in Marshalls Creek, killing six people, including three local volunteer firefighters who had responded to what appeared to be an ordinary vehicle fire. Ten others were injured. It was only after the blast that investigators determined the trailer had been carrying explosives. There were no warning placards on the truck, no way for the firefighters to know what they were approaching.

The deaths at Marshalls Creek became part of a growing national conversation about the invisible dangers moving through communities on highways every day. A decade later, the United States Congress passed the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act of nineteen seventy-five, setting federal regulations requiring that hazardous materials be clearly identified on vehicles transporting them. The three firefighters and three others who died here helped write a law that has protected first responders ever since.