The Kansas City, Missouri Fire Department lost six firefighters and their vehicles - two entire pumper companies - in an explosion that occurred while they were extinguishing a fire at a construction site. The fire involved a trailer/magazine containing blasting mixtures of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, most containing aluminum pellets, too. The fire also involved two other vehicles and ultimately a second trailer/magazine that also exploded. A summary of the incident's key issues is present in table form on the following page.
The firefighters were not told specifically what was in the trailer/ magazine, but had been cautioned by the dispatcher about explosives on the site. Exactly what they suspected was in the trailers will probably never be known.
The two captains and four firefighters involved were highly experienced. Four of the six had attended National Fire Academy field courses on hazardous material identification. They also had DOT Hazardous Materials Guidebooks in their vehicles.
However, the trailers/magazines containing the blasting agents probably had no markings or placards indicating their contents, and the crews may never have been sure of what was in them, especially since other, prominently marked magazines were present, and may have been misconstrued to contain all the dangerous materials. The Fire Department was not aware of the presence of the trailers/magazines or their contents before the incident due to a lack of jurisdictional authority and because the city's Fire Prevention and Protection Code did not require the City Engineer to notify the Fire Department that blasting permits had been issued. (This was immediately changed after the incident.) More importantly, the Kansas City Fire Department had no authority or responsibility to inspect the site because it was a State enclave.
Furthermore, it is not clear that if the personnel on the scene had known of the presence of the blasting agent (ammonium nitrate mixed with fuel oil), their hazardous materials training or their use of the DOT Guidebook would have necessarily led them to behave differently than they did.
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