ATCHISON, Kan. — Crews temporarily suspended their search Sunday for three people missing since an explosion at a Kansas grain elevator that killed three workers and left two critically injured with severe burns.
Officials with the company that owns and operates the elevator said in a statement that they know the location of those who are missing and will resume the search at some point. They have brought an engineer to the scene to help develop a plan on how to continue the recovery effort.
The blast, which shook the ground so hard that it was felt in neighboring Missouri, is a harrowing reminder of the dangers workers face inside elevators brimming with highly combustible grain dust at the end of the harvest season.
The explosion Saturday night at the elevator in Atchison, about 50 miles northwest of Kansas City, Mo., sent an orange fireball into the night sky, shot off a chunk of the grain distribution building directly above the elevator and blew a large hole in the side of one of its concrete silos.
Officials with Bartlett Grain Co., which owns and operates the elevator, decided to temporarily halt the search for the three missing people — one worker and two grain inspectors — because it was unsafe to be inside the facility, said Atchison City Manager Trey Cocking. Smoke could still be seen billowing from the top, and officials were fearful the building could fall on top of rescue crews.
Heavy equipment, federal safety investigators and engineers were expected to arrive later Sunday to assist the crews.
“It’s a fairly dangerous situation. We don’t feel comfortable putting fire crews in,” Cocking said.
He said crews had not given up hope that they would find the remaining three alive, although the search was now considered a recovery effort.
The search is expected to resume this morning.
Rob Nohr, an engineer from Yankton, S.D., hired by Bartlett Grain, was at the scene Sunday night with federal safety investigators assessing the situation and to come up with the next steps for the recovery plan. Grain company officials said Nohr is an expert in helping investigate such accidents.
One of the missing is Travis Keil, a war veteran who has served as a site inspector for 16 years. His parents, Gary and Ramona Keil, drove from Salina to Atchison to wait with his three children — ages 8, 12 and 15 — as crews searched.
“We have all our prayers working for him,” Gary Keil said. “It’s a parent’s worst nightmare to go through this.”
Local authorities late Sunday identified those killed as 20-year-old Chad Roberts, 21-year-old Ryan Federinko and 24-year-old John Burke.
Bartlett Grain President Bill Fellows said in a statement that workers were loading a train with corn when the explosion occurred, but the cause was not immediately known.
Over the past four decades, there have more than 600 explosions at grain elevators, killing more than 250 people and injuring more than 1,000, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Just last year, there were grain explosions or fires in several states including Nebraska, Illinois, Ohio, South Dakota and Louisiana. None was fatal, but several sent workers scrambling, and one in Toledo, Ohio, in September 2010 forced people to evacuate from a nearby mobile home park.
When grain is handled at elevators, it creates dust that floats around inside the storage facility. The finer the graindust particles, the greater its volatility. Typically, something — perhaps sparks from equipment or a cigarette — ignites the dust. That sends a pressure wave that detonates the rest of the floating dust in the facility.
Fireballs are a common feature of grain-dust explosions, where intense heat from the blast can reach 1,500 to 2,000 degrees.
Dust from corn is among the most dangerous. Most dust explosions happen in late summer and early fall when old, dried grain is being cleaned out of elevators in preparation for the harvest. Freshly harvested corn is less explosive because it’s wetter.
The Atchison elevator, which is federally licensed to handle up to 1.18 million bushels, is among roughly 850 elevators in Kansas. The state is now winding up its fall harvest of corn, sorghum and soybeans.
OSHA has expanded its inspections and efforts to control volatile grain dust in Kansas elevators since an explosion in 1998 at DeBruce Grain, Inc.’s facility in Haysville, which killed seven workers and injured 10 others, said Tom Tunnell, executive director of the Kansas Grain and Feed Association, the industry group representing Kansas grain elevators.
He said the industry as a whole has increased awareness of the dangers since a number of elevator explosions along the Gulf of Mexico in the 1970s.
“If ever an industry is well trained, it is ours. We understand dust is an explosive agent, and our members work hard to control it,” Tunnell said Sunday.
The Atchison facility where the blast occurred has not been cited for any violations in the last 10 years, according to OSHA data, though Bartlett Grain Co. was cited after two people died in separate incidents at two of its other facilities. Neither of those fatalities involved explosions at grain elevators.
In 2007, a Bartlett Grain maintenance employee died in a fall from a work platform at the company’s facility in St. Joseph, Mo. In 2004, another employee died while operating a lift that fell backward at a company site in Kansas City, Mo.
“The industry has had a good record — except for a few of this type — considering the billions and billions of bushels of grain handled,” Tunnell said.
The two people injured in the explosion were taken to the burn unit at the University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, Kan., hospital spokesman Dennis McCulloch said. One was listed in critical condition Sunday evening and the other was in serious condition, he said.
Cocking said four other people, including one woman, escaped without injuries. No names were being released pending notification of families.
Paul Moccia, who lives about a half-mile from the grain elevator, said the explosion shook his house and lights flickered across his neighborhood for about 30 seconds.
“It was extremely loud. It was kind of like to me a double whomp — a bomp bomp. It reverberated, and kind of echoed down through the valley ... kind of like a shock wave,” said Moccia, 57. “Everybody came outside. Neighbors were trying to figure out what was going on. It was quite a thump.”
Information for this article was contributed from Kansas City, Mo., by Maria Sudekum Fisher of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 10/31/2011