It is the morning of June 8, 1998 Wichita, KS and for the workers at the DeBruce Grain
Elevator it is like any other day.
They work at the Guinness books world record holder for the largest grain elevator, the
structure is truly an impressive sight with its 310 grain storage silos and being roughly
½ a mile in length.
Reportedly if it is storing wheat exclusively, it can supply the wheat for all the bread
consumed in the United States for nearly six weeks.
However this seemingly ordinary Monday morning would be the backdrop to disaster.
An explosion would spread a fireball across most of the vast structure killing and injuring
several workers on-site.
The disaster would become another in a long list of events linked to from an outsider's
perspective a rather innocuous item, dust.
But for those who know grain dust is a horrific fuel for fires.
My name is John and Today we are looking at the DeBruce Grain Elevator explosion.
Grain a story as old as time.
Our story's beginnings go all the way back to the start of humans becoming an agrarian
species.
Ok maybe for brevity I’ll start a bit later on in human history, there is extensive evidence
of bread making in ancient Egypt.
Ok ok I’ll bring it forward a bit more, making use of machines to help in the processing
of grain goes back surprisingly far to water powered grain mills of Asia Minor, before
71 BC.
Over the coming centuries thousands of grain mills would pop up along rivers across the
world.
Like with most tool driven industries the grain processing world would make giant leaps
forward in grain production during the industrial revolution.
The industrial revolution changed human history forever where workers were brought out from
the countryside into the factories, a side effect was this was a population boom, which
necessitated ever more food production.
The improved efficiency in farming, milling and bread production, because of the industrial
revolution, meant that ever more storage was needed to feed the ever growing population.
As such grain storage solutions became a very important cog in the machine of food production.
With the advent of the steam engine greater power was available to enable transport of
grain via conveyor belts.
The first steam powered grain elevator is credited to Buffalo, New York, in 1843.
Early elevators were housed in wooden structures and produced insane amounts of dust, and as
such something that went hand in hand with these buildings was explosions and fires.
Let’s talk about why grain dust is such a big issue with fires.
You see grain when processed and transported it creates dust fine particles which hang
around in the air.
Fine dust has a greater surface area compared to their mass, and due to solids only being
able to burn on their surface, the area that has access to oxygen dust particles can burn
much quicker than solid material.
The small size of each particle, means little energy is needed to catch fire as well.
If in high enough concentration just a small spark can cause combustion and grain elevators
with their power source (steam engine, diesel, petrol, or electric) being a potential Infiniti
on source, poorly maintained bearings, or a small static shock being all that’s needed
to start an explosion.
As technology improved bigger and bigger grain elevators would be built, eventually culminating
in the Debruce grain elevator, with each increase in size so did the scale of its disasters
for example the Washburn mill explosion in 1878, the Westwego explosion in 1977 and in
the 1990s Debruce would be no different.
But first let’s look at the origin of the Debruce elevator.
The debruce grain elevator the worlds largest
In the early 1950s the Garvey Grain Company is overseeing a new construction,
The contractor Chalmers and Borton of Hutchinson, Kansas are building a new grain storage complex,
completing it in 1953.
The massive building consists of a tall, square headhouse centered in-line between two identical
arrays of grain silos -- 30' in diameter and 120' high -- arranged three abreast.
But soon this is not enough for the Garvey grain co and the facility is again placed
under construction being extended symmetrically on each end.
An additional 33 silos are added leading to a total of 310, every inch of usable area
is utilized not just the circular silos but even the star like spaces in between are filled
with grain.
After the extension, the complex is a whopping 2716 feet long and 92feet wide.
The head house was the centerpiece to the whole complex and in all intents and purposes
is the most important part of the facility's ability to sort a store grain.
Let’s look at the grains journey, right well delivery to the site can come in two
ways by rail or road.
Let’s just say railcar for now, it is emptied into a dumper pit below the head house, here
there is a small by comparison conveyor belt.
this belt takes the grain to the bottom of the elevator, Debruce has 4 of these and they
consist of a belt with buckets attached for scooping up the grain.
The elevator takes the grain all the way to the top of the head house, from there it is
sent down chutes to two bins where it is weighed.
Then the grain is dropped onto either a looped conveyor belt or down to a rail car.
Now the looped belts are impressive. There are 4 and each is a continuous 3,000 ft long
conveyor.
These run along the top of the silos from the gallery floor level of the head house
all the way along the top of the silos.
Just to clarify there are 2 in each direction to the south and north wings of the complex.
Grain runs along the top of the silos on the conveyor belts away from the head house along
the gallery, where a device called a tripper diverts the grain into the selected silo.
The conveyor belt continues along the entire length of the silo array and down the end
of their respective end.
The belt now goes underground underneath the silos in two tunnels per array 1 for each
belt.
Here is where grain can be emptied from a silo where the conveyor belt transports it
back to the head house for the process to essentially repeat.
Although in reality after storage it will probably go to a waiting rail car.
The tunnels underneath the silos have connecting passageways called crossovers, these allowed
staff access to either tunnel when undertaking work.
Now the head house had a couple of offices where staff would operate the complex and
oversea weighing of grain.
But there is one big issue with such an impressive example of storage and transportation, and
it has plagued the industry for all of its history and that is dust.
You see, having such massive belts there are multiple take up pulleys to facilitate the
constant flexing, expansion and contraction of the belts.
This produced vast amounts of grain dust in both the galleries and the tunnels.
But with a problem there was a solution, that was in the form of pneumatic dust control
and filtration systems.
Garvey Grain Company had installed pneumatic dust control systems throughout the elevator
complex.
The complex would be taken over by Debruce grain, a company formed in 1978.
The site had several tragedies over its time of operation, with two deaths from being trapped
in confined spaces in 1978 and 83 respectively,
Upon taking over… the company reportedly spent around $100,000 on updating the dust
collection System, but this would prove to be not enough.
The disaster.
Over the complex’s operation several fires had occurred but luckily the actions of staff
had stopped any further spread.
A fire in early June 1998 spread in the south array but was subsequently extinguished, minutes
from the accident report pegged the fire to a faulty bearing.
But history would repeat itself just 1 week later, on the 8th of June 1998 the 20.7 million
bushel storage capacity Debruce grain elevator was very much below full when it was storing
roughly 7 million bushels, but this by no means meant it was safer.
At roughly 0918 A fire broke out on the east tunnel of the south array, quickly the flames
Ignited the dust that coated the tunnel floor.
The heat and pressure caused a dust explosion to occur, the blast wave was directed down
the tunnel causing further dust to ignite this meant Heat was spread to the conveyor
belt in the north tunnel through the crossover tunnels
The burning grain and dust swept along both tunnels towards the head house.
As the heat and shock waves continued along the structure several silo roofs were blown
off.
The dusty basement of the head house blew out spreading hot grain and flames up the
4 elevators, blowing out the front and back of the building.
A fireball was created in the explosion and traveled along the south galley and north
galley away from the head house.
The blast then traveled back down into conveyor belt tunnels but this time on the north array,
continuing to blow out concrete chunks from the structure.
It was estimated that at least 10 blasts occurred resulting in almost every section of the building
seeing some form of damage.
Although the explosions happened in a short period of time the heat generated would result
in burning grain for weeks.
By 0945, a request for all on-duty Rescue Team members was sent out. Several staff on
duty at the time were missing.
The surviving grain had filled into the exposed tunnels leaving rescue an impossible and complex
task.
Two workers were killed instantly in the blast, 11 were injured with some even stranded in
various sections of the buildings rooftop, a helicopter and a crane was used to rescue
workers.
By the next day some 90 rescue workers from Wichita, Neb., and Oklahoma were digging with
shovels and bulldozers Whilst trying to rescue the missing workers.
By the 11th the death toll would be up to 5 as bodies were recovered amongst the wreckage.
Rescue workers continued to search the south array for the final person but sadly their
body would be discovered in the east tunnel of the south array.
But with the grain elevator in ruins and 7 now dead the key question had to be answered
what was the cause of the debruce elevator explosion.
Investigation.
Investigators from osha arrived on the site on the 22nd of June and started immediately
gathering eyewitness and physical evidence.
Several witness accounts pointed towards the south array being the beginning point of disaster.
In the recovery works a lot of tangible evidence was lost as parts of the structure were removed
to gain access to victims bodies.
The ignition source was located in an overheated bearing on the south array east tunnel conveyor
belt, the same area where just a week before there had been a fire.
Disaster could have been averted if the bearings had been given simple grease applications.
It was also found that the dust collection system had been out of use for nearly a year
and no policy of manual dust cleaning had been implemented.
It was discovered that in some places even after the fire and explosions that dust was
still at a depth of 7 inches in some places.
Thus the stage was set for the 8th of June even though the blatant warning signs were
there.
The Debruce disaster is a classic case of poor maintenance and poor management where
the workers become the victims of cost cutting.
OSHA cited Debruce grain in December 1998 for violations of the grain handling standard.
The company paid a fine of $650,000 in the early 2000s.
But this wouldn't be the end of deaths linked to the grain industry as a whole in the US
or even the elevator in witchta.
2 more would die in the rebuilt grain facility after Debruces merger with Gavilon grain in
2010 in 2018 after being buried in grain onsite.
Now where would you rate this disaster? I’m going to put it a 4 on my disaster scale as
well as a 4 on my legacy scale.
This video is a Plainly Difficult production. All videos on the channel are creative commons
Attribution-ShareAlike. Plainly difficult videos are produced by me
John, in a sunny Southeastern corner of london, uk.
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https://www.osha.gov/grain-handling/geeit
https://info.hughesenv.com/learning-grain-dust-explosion
http://genealogytrails.com/main/events/debrucegrainfire.html
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/ourgrandfathersgrainelevators.com/2015/11/24/the-debruce-grain-elevator-disaster-in-wichita-reexamined/amp/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw8dBi76LJibMjBhMGE3ZWMtNDJlMi00MzFkLWEzNGEtZjAwN2E3Y2VjYjUx/view?resourcekey=0-yQYyw8eEgusy-QbHtdzMvw
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Weighing_merchandise_Met_47.11.5.jpg