The News Tribune

Those who heard and saw the Atlas foundry explosions Saturday didn’t initially know what they were, or what to do. They share their fearful reactions.

Michael Kelly was on eastbound Highway 16 on Saturday when he saw fire coming from Atlas Castings & Technology.

He had a bad feeling.

“The fire just didn’t look right,” Kelly said later. “It was a violent fire. It looked menacing. Something was fueling it, and I felt like something was going to happen.”

Traffic had slowed as vehicles approached the Nalley Valley. He asked his sister, Erin, to pull their car to the left shoulder. The agitated driver behind them started honking.

“I started snapping some photos on my phone,” said Kelly, a 31-year-old product manager from San Francisco. “I told my sister, ‘This could blow up soon.’”

And then it blew up.

The blast shook the car and its passengers.

“We really didn’t know what to do after that,” he said. “So everyone was just kind of stopped on the highway.”

Every few seconds, a driver would gun the engine and zoom past the site of the metal foundry. Michael and Erin Kelly debated whether to stay put or try to get out of the way. They were worried their car could get caught in another, larger explosion.

About four minutes later, they decided to go for it.

“I wanted to go 80 mph past that thing,” he said. “We passed a smoking, twisted piece of metal” – the axle from the propane truck that exploded, setting off the blasts.

Scott Fontaine, The News Tribune

Mesina Bach felt the big blast in the core of her being, as if an unseen hand reached in and yanked the breath right out of her soul.

“You know those rings you see with an atom bomb?” she asked, referring to concentric circles of energy. “It was like that.”

“You felt it inside. … It was as if you’d just inhaled and the air got sucked right back out.”

Bach, a 25-year-old Tacoma resident, and her mom, Debi La-Fleur of Gig Harbor, were shopping in Party World when the first concussion struck.

They went outside and ran toward the smoke, hoping to learn what shook the Party World building.

As Bach ran toward the flames and got closer to the foundry, she began hearing “a horrendous hiss.”

“You know something’s going on when you hear a hiss like that,” she said. “You know, this is not over.”

It wasn’t.

“Oh my God,” she said. “I saw another explosion and then, snap,” she added, snapping her fingers for emphasis, “there was a horrendous boom” and accompanying fireball.

“It was like something out of a James Bond movie.”

Her mother also saw it as cataclysmic.

“It looked like an atom bomb blast,” LaFleur said.

“There was glass (from store windows) everywhere,” she said. “When the big boom hit, if I was one step closer (to a window), I would have had a shard of glass in my side.”

Kris Sherman, The News Tribune

“I was in the grinding room,” said Curt Kelly, an Atlas worker. “There were three explosions. A fireball. It felt like World War II. You could feel the ground shake, you could feel the heat.”

C.R. Roberts, The News Tribune

After the explosions, Atlas employees began leaving the site, several walking across Center Street and up the hill on South Wilkeson Street.

The neighborhood and more were watching.

Some 20 minutes after the explosions, flames continued to gush, fed by gas still under pressure. A Tacoma police sergeant directed traffic at Wilkeson and South 25th Street.

“If you really want to help, say some prayers,” he said.

C.R. Roberts, The News Tribune

Richard Benfield, who lives at the top of the Wilkeson hill, heard the explosions and headed for his yard.

“Flames were going over the tree line,” he said. “There was a fireball.”

His wife, Cheryl Brown, was sitting in the dining room.

“I could feel the heat through the window,” she said.

As about 20 Atlas workers stood watching the smoke rise, Betty Ashley of Ruston came searching for her husband.

Looking terrified, she scanned the faces – some blackened by soot from the explosion.

She found her husband and nearly collapsed on the sidewalk. They embraced.

“I’m very happy,” she said.

C.R. Roberts, The News Tribune

Carmen Lee brought four cases of Pepsi to distribute to the workers who’d come to her neighborhood. She was at 25th and Wilkeson streets with son Joe Justin and daughter Andrea Justin.

“I thought they might be thirsty,” Lee said. “We’re all people.”

C.R. Roberts, The News Tribune

The blast was felt throughout the region. Nancy Ackerman was in downtown Sumner when she heard a boom.

“I said, ‘What the hell was that?’” she said. “And then I turned around and looked at the mountain. I wanted to see if it was exploding.”

Scott Fontaine, The News Tribune

Taleen Venesky was even farther away. She was cooking at her home in Orting when a large bang drowned out the sound of her television.

“It sounded like somebody dropped lots of plywood on the road,” she said.

Scott Fontaine, The News Tribune

Craig Arndt and his daughter, Kacie, were driving to lunch when they first spotted the fire. He wasn’t sure what it was; he guessed a car had fallen off Highway 16.

He told Kacie, his 17-year-old daughter driving with a learner’s permit, to pull to the side of the road.

Craig Arndt stood on a sidewalk on the 2300 block of South Tacoma Way and began shooting video with his digital camera.

When a propane tank exploded, he described feeling a concussion wave followed by a strong heat blast.

“When you see one fire truck going by, it’s no big deal,” he said. “But when you see six or seven go by, it’s time to see what’s going on.”

Scott Fontaine, The News Tribune

Cheryl Webb was at The People’s Community Center at South 16th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, more than a mile away from Atlas, when she heard the blast.

She and her husband, Lee, were waiting for their niece’s basketball game to start.

“Lee said it was an explosion, so we came down to see what was going on,” Webb said.

The three of them were milling around with dozens of other onlookers at 25th Street and Wilkeson, just uphill from the foundry.

Police were attempting to move onlookers off of the streets and onto sidewalks when a car knocked down a young man, adding to the chaos.

“Oh, this is getting scary,” Webb said. A man who identified himself only as “Mick” was another of the onlookers on South Wilkeson Street, uphill from the foundry. He said he and some friends had been at a home near South 15th and South J streets when they heard and felt the explosion.

“We heard something blow up, and it shook us all, so we just came running,” he said.

He pointed to a home with several broken windows.

“Looks like those guys got hit by it,” he said.