Ian Swenson .com

In October of last year the Atlas Foundry in Tacoma, WA had an explosion. There were problems with refueling one of their three ginormous propane tanks and the tanks apparently didn’t like that.

If you didn’t get a chance to see or hear about it, watch this (some foul language):

That video barely does the explosion justice. I prefer this picture:

I don’t have the credits for that photo, sorry. Also, don’t you think that it looks a bit like Lenin? Communism strikes again, eh?

Anywho, I was both working and outside when the explosions happened. Here’s my recap:

The first explosion was nothing special. I didn’t even think it was an explosion. There are some railroad tracks in the vicinity and when large trucks speed across them it can make an explosion-like sound. But I was outside with some customers helping them load their new kayaks when we noticed the plume of smoke coming over the building across from us.

Now I work about four block from where the propane tanks are — although I didn’t know it was the propane, just knew it was somewhere on the grounds of the huge foundry — which is about a tenth of a mile. That is two blocks closer than the fellers in the video.

We went around the building across the street so we could get a better view at the fire over the foundry. Grabbed the quality-challenged digital camera we keep at work and snapped a couple pictures. All done with that, turned the camera off.

Then, kablooey. The blast was huge. The heat was instantaneous and I could feel it on my face. For a brief moment, I didn’t think the explosion would stop growing and I was scared.

The axle from the propane truck fell on the highway viaduct you can see in the photo. It hit nothing. In fact, besides the truck driver himself, no one was seriously injured. That’s amazing.

So, last week I got a special phone call at work. It was a gal working for a production company in California who was calling businesses in the area looking for witnesses to the explosion. Turns out they’re producing a special for the Discovery Channel on explosions “gone wrong.” She was very excited when I told her I (and my dad) was an eye-witness and would be willing to interview for their program.

After making arrangements to meet this week, I didn’t expect anything more to come of it. Things like this always get you excited, and they rarely materialize. I didn’t want my hopes to spiral out of control only to be squashed on when the production company decides it doesn’t want to include the Tacoma explosion in their special or that they don’t need my interview.

Fortunately, my worries were without basis. Today three nice gentlemen from the production company visited me at work. After a little more than an hour’s work, I had recorded several minutes of an interview with them. It was rather cool!

They decided they wanted to shoot outside near the railroad tracks so that they could catch the foundry as a backdrop. It turned out I was too tall for where they wanted, so we had to bring out a chair and then have me act as if I were standing.

I got miked up with one of those cool, tiny wireless mikes and the director prompted and coached me through the interview. I kept screwing up the few things he told me. I caught myself glancing at the camera every once and again, I didn’t always rephrase his questions (the answer “blue” doesn’t make much sense without “my favorite color is…”), and I had a tendency to say “really” too often which was too conversational.

All in all it was fun. They said I did great and they definitely got what they were looking for. I hope to see myself on TV before long.