Hazmat Studies: 41 Dead, Businesses Decimated In Historic Indiana Explosions

Saturday, April 6, 1968, the day before Palm Sunday, by all accounts started out as an unusually beautiful spring day in east-central Indiana. Large numbers of people were out shopping and downtown Richmond was bustling with activity.

At 1:47 P.M., two tremendous explosions rocked the downtown area, killing 41 people, including seven children, and injuring more than 127. None of the injured people died; all of the fatalities occurred at the blast site. Five families suffered multiple losses of life, including one family that lost a mother and two children.

City’s place in history

Historic Richmond, with a population of 36,000, is located just off Interstate 70, east of Indianapolis at the junction of U.S. Highways 40 and 27 and a few miles from the Ohio border. “National Road,” now U.S. 40, is the main street in Richmond. Twice awarded “All American City” status, Richmond celebrated its bicentennial in 2006 and is home to the Indiana Football Hall of Fame, Indiana University East, Earlham College, Ivy Tech and Purdue College of Technology. Richmond is also the home of the now-closed Gennett Recording Studio and the Starr Piano Companies and the boyhood home of Orville and Wilbur Wright, the “Wright Brothers.”

Richmond’s fire department was all volunteer from 1830 to 1872. The first organized fire company in 1830 began with 15 members signing up. The first fire pump, on wheels and pulled by a rope, had been purchased in 1829. From 1872 to now, the fire department has been fully career.

Five still-standing early fire stations have been converted to other uses, including Station 1, which is a fire-themed restaurant owned by one of the department’s current members. At the time of the explosions in 1968, Richmond had six fire stations in service. Only Station 4 is still at the same location; built in 1964, it is located at 801 South L St. Station 6, built in 1960 with funds from the federal government after Richmond agreed to staff it to secure a federal contract for development and manufacturing of munitions by a local company. Station 6 was closed on March 16, 2009.

Today’s modern Richmond Fire Department is led by Chief Jerry Purcell with 81 career firefighters and staff operating out of five stations. Chief Purcell rose through the ranks and became chief March 12, 2014. He was hired in 1984 as part of the department’s first class of EMTs. He was appointed assistant chief on Jan. 1, 1996, and battalion chief on Jan. 1, 2000. Headquarters Station 1 is located at 101 South 5th St. in downtown Richmond, just two blocks from the site of the 1968 explosion.

The fire department covers an area of approximately 56 square miles, including the City of Richmond, a two-mile area around the city and contract coverage for Wayne Township and Spring Grove. Firefighters operate five engine companies, one of which is a 75-foot quint; a 100-foot aerial; two brush units; three front-line ambulances – two advanced life support (ALS) and one basic life support (BLS) – with five more available as needed; and rescue, hazmat and swift water units. The department also has a confined space team and a joint dive team with the Richmond Police Department. An EMS all-terrain vehicle is in development. All firefighters are trained as EMTs or paramedics. Richmond operates a Fire Prevention Division that includes public education, fire investigation and fire inspections, with company-level inspections.

Richmond formed a hazardous materials team in 1997. Previously, the department relied on the Indianapolis hazmat team, with response times of 60 to 90 minutes. All Richmond firefighters are certified to the hazmat awareness or operations levels. There are 23 hazmat technicians within the department. The Anderson Fire Department is available to provide mutual aid for hazmat incidents when needed.

Gunshot ignites leaking gas

Police Officer John Ross was the first emergency responder on the scene of the explosion, along with his partner, Howard Crist. The officers had no idea what had happened. In the street, they found a body that they covered with a curtain torn from a broken window at a business. There were no massive fires at that time, but they could hear ammunition popping like firecrackers in the distance. A car had flipped on its side from the force of the blast in front of the Hoosier Store. Using a heavy wooden door as a shield, the officers rescued the occupant of the vehicle. They used the door as a stretcher and volunteers took the injured person to the hospital.

Ground zero was the Marting Arms Sporting Goods Store at corner of 6th Avenue and Main Street in the heart of downtown Richmond. Guns, ammunition, black powder and primers were among the goods. A gun firing range was in the basement of the store.

Witnesses described the first explosion as “muffled.” It caused a severe vibration of the walls of Marting Arms and lifted the building slightly off its foundation. An investigation into the cause of the explosions determined that a gas leak occurred in the Marting Arms building and the leaking gas was ignited by a gunshot in the firing range. The second explosion, the more powerful of the two, was touched off by the first, igniting gunpowder and primers stored in the basement.

One person who was in the Marting Arms building at the time of the explosions survived. Jack Bales was standing shoulder to shoulder to his childhood friend Greg Oler at the rear counter of the store. He saw his friend fall through the floor and never saw him again; he died at the scene.

“There were about one or two seconds between blasts,” Bales said. “When the first one hit, I moved to cover my head and I saw Greg go down. Then the second one hit. When I was in the hospital, I think the second day, my parents came and told me that they found Greg’s body in the rubble in the basement of Marting’s.”

Three buildings were destroyed and many others were damaged by the explosions and resulting fires. Window glass was broken for more than three blocks and the blast was heard over a mile away. Nothing but a hole in the ground remained where the sporting goods store had been. Adjoining buildings were ripped apart and fires raged through the business district. Twenty buildings had to be condemned, 125 buildings were damaged and the estimated dollar loss was $15 million (more than $100 million in today’s dollars).

Fortunately for firefighters and police officers, the explosions occurred before they arrived on scene. However, ammunition stored in the sporting goods store continued to go off as fire raged inside the building. Emergency responders faced hazards that included fires, leaking gas, unstable buildings and heavy smoke that reduced visibility. Hundreds of civilian volunteers joined police, firefighters and National Guard troops in searching through brick, glass and twisted metal for survivors and bodies. Ordinary citizens helped firefighters operate hoselines and perform other functions.

Firefighting efforts were directed at stopping the fire from spreading beyond the block between 5th and 6th avenues. A stand was made at the State Theater on the east side that was successful in stopping the eastward travel of the fire. Given the massive volume of smoke and fire and the obstacles created by the explosions, fire crews did an excellent job of containing the inferno.

Construction companies from the community and personnel brought heavy equipment and worked for days without any compensation. Delucio Brothers Construction, operated by six brothers, brought staff and equipment from other construction sites. Mutual aid responded from surrounding areas of Indiana as well as Ohio. This aid included Civil Defense personnel, fire departments from as far away as Eaton and Dayton, OH, and state and local police agencies.

Fire departments responded from throughout Wayne County, IN, including Boston, Cambridge City, Centerville, Dublin, Fountain City, Greens Fork, Hagerstown, Milton, Webster and Williamsburg. Other departments responded from neighboring counties and from Ohio to staff empty Richmond fire stations, to handle any additional calls and provide assistance at the scene. These departments included Anderson, Brookville, Everton, Lewisville, Liberty, Lynn and New Castle from Indiana and Dayton, Hollansburg, New Madison, Trotwood and West Alexandria from Ohio.

Unique rescue squad

In 1968, there were no urban search and rescue (USAR) teams and few other organized collapse and confined-space teams in Indiana and most other places in the United States. Little equipment or technology was available compared to today’s resources, to assist rescue personnel in searching collapsed buildings and debris. However, a unique rescue squad, Box 21, had been organized in Dayton, OH, in 1935. It was founded by seven Dayton men visiting a firehouse who decided to band together and form a rescue unit to aid firefighters. They asked which of the city’s fire stations received the most disaster calls and were told it was Box 21. Thus, the name of the organization was chosen. Members of this all-volunteer organization responded to Richmond to assist in the search and rescue for victims and were commended many times for their outstanding performance. Box 21 boasted 40 personnel, eight boats, a canteen truck, two heavy-duty rescue trucks, three ambulances and a child’s ambulance donated by Kiwanis at the time of the response to Richmond.

Approximately a year before the explosion in Richmond, a Community Disaster Plan was created and exercised by the Wayne County Office of Civil Defense (now Wayne County Emergency Management). Also involved in the development of the plan were local hospital officials, the Red Cross, county medical society, city police and the county health office.

EMS across the United States in 1968 amounted to little more than first-aid and transportation to a hospital. Because of the large number of injuries in Richmond and only a few ambulances available, private citizens used station wagons and other vehicles to transport victims to hospitals. Most often ambulances were operated by funeral homes and hearses sometimes doubled as ambulances because of the vehicle design. In the funeral trade, hearses are often called funeral coaches. Many were fitted with connections that allowed for the easy installation of emergency lights and sirens to convert from hearse to ambulance. Often, the ambulances were staffed by funeral home workers with little or no first-aid training.

When I was 18, I worked for a furniture store in a small town in southern Nebraska. The store owner also owned and operated a funeral home. Because I was a volunteer firefighter, even without any real medical training, I was the one who went on ambulance calls. It was not until the 1970s that EMS started to evolve with the implementation of emergency medical technician programs. In 1970, President Lyndon Johnson’s Committee on Highway Traffic Safety recommended the creation of a national certification agency to establish uniform standards for training and examination of personnel active in the delivery of emergency ambulance service. Richmond’s first class of EMTs were trained in 1984 and certified in 1985. Today, all firefighters in Richmond are required to have a minimum EMS certification of EMT. In 2012, the Richmond Fire Department was certified as an ALS provider.

Firefighter memories

Firefighter Bill Smith had been on the Richmond Fire Department for about a year and was assigned to Station 3. As his unit arrived on scene in front of Holthouse Furniture Store, they were met by a police officer who told them there were people trapped in the basement. Firefighter Smith went to the basement and encountered a trapped woman who held his hand and begged him to save her. He tried to free the woman from the debris, but was unable to remove her on his own. Firefighter Smith proceeded back outside and located two additional firefighters to assist him in rescuing the woman. (In 1968, radio communications capability for individual firefighters was not like it is today. While many emergency vehicles were equipped with radios, few portable radios were in use. Much of necessary communications occurred face to face or by use of runners.) As firefighters opened the door to the basement, they were met by heavy flames and smoke. Everyone who had been trapped in the basement died in the fire. Firefighter Smith retired from the department in 1992 after 25 years of service.

Twelve-year-old Jeannine Herron (now Jeannine Hiatt) was at Virginia’s Beauty Shop and had just finished getting a haircut when the explosions occurred. She ended up on the roof of Sargent’s Wallpaper Store, two doors away. At the time, it was believed she was blown there by the force of the second explosion. She does not remember exactly how she got on the roof, but believes she climbed onto the roof through burning debris.

Hiatt remembers getting a haircut, then “there was a fire and figured I better try to get up (from my chair) because I had debris all over me,” she said. “A lady set me on a window ledge to get out…As a 12-year-old, I was screaming and crying for her to come with me. But she was calm and said, ‘No, you get help, I’ll be fine.’” The next thing she remembers was Firefighter Bobby Johnson coming to save her.

Firefighter Johnson was on his day off from the fire department and had been outside talking with his brother-in-law. He happened to look up in the sky and saw a mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke darkening the sky.

“I thought, maybe we had a downtown plane crash,” he said. “It just looked like the picture of the atomic bomb.” He hurried to the scene. Johnson saw Hiatt atop Sargent’s Wallpaper Store, screaming. He grabbed a ladder from a fire truck and helped her to safety. Hiatt told him more people were trapped in the beauty shop. Firefighters found the shop engulfed in flames. Hiatt believes the woman who helped her and the woman who was cutting her hair both died in that fire. “I still believe I had a guardian angel,” Hiatt said.

Firefighter Joe Perkins believes one other person survived. Off duty that day, Firefighter Perkins saw smoke from the explosion and headed downtown to Fire Station 1, the Headquarters Station, then located near 5th Avenue and Main Street. From there, Firefighter Perkins walked the short distance to the explosion scene. He said he had just arrived at the scene outside the beauty shop “when somebody yelled, ‘There's more people in there,’” Perkins said. He ran inside and “I got a hold of a lady and carried her on my shoulders.”

Firefighter Perkins attempted to return to the beauty shop to rescue more people, but was turned back by heavy smoke and flames. After rescue efforts at the beauty shop, Johnson and Perkins continued to search for people in trouble. “There were so many people trapped,” Johnson sais. “You’d begin to help somebody, then see someone who needed it worse,” Perkins said.

Firefighter Johnson went on to the State Theater and helped rescue children who had been watching a movie. Firefighter Perkins stayed on scene for three days. He rose through the ranks to become a battalion chief before he retired.

According to former Police Chief Louis Gibbs, “We cashed it in that day. Richmond was never the same after that.

Perhaps Palladium Item newspaper reporter Bill Engle summed it up best: “April 6, 1968, turned out to be the last normal Saturday that Richmond would see for a long, long time. The explosions destroyed a major portion of the downtown shopping district and burned a section of the city’s heart out. It also brought out the best in the citizens, whose heroic efforts saved many lives.

Thanks to the Palladium-Item for the use of interview quotes from Police Chief Louis Gibbs, Reporter Bill Engle, Jeannine Hiatt, Jack Bales, Bill Smith and Bobby Johnson. Thanks also to the Wayne County Convention and Tourism Bureau for use of the book Reflections. Thanks to the Richmond Fire Department for photos and especially Chief Jerry Purcell for his help in gathering information that helped make this article possible.

For additional information about the explosion, contact Chief Jerry Purcell of the Richmond Fire Department at [email protected] or 765-983-7264.

ROBERT BURKE, hazardous materials and fire protection consultant, a Firehouse^® contributing editor, is a Certified Fire Protection Specialist (CFSP), Fire Inspector II, Fire Inspector III, Fire Investigator and Hazardous Materials Specialist, and has served on state and county hazmat teams. Burke is the author of the textbooks Hazardous Materials Chemistry for Emergency Responders, Counter-Terrorism for Emergency Responders, Fire Protection: Systems and Response and Hazmat Teams Across America. He can be contacted at [email protected].

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