“Like a jet engine taking off”
The 2003 silo explosion at Hoge Lumber Company
by Meta Hoge
Pressure built up and the ground began to shake.
Approximately two hours after a fire ignited in one of the silos at Hoge Lumber Company in New Knoxville, Ohio, in October 2003, the cement cylinder exploded. Wood chips and smoke burst through the auger pit doors “like a jet engine taking off.”
Several firefighters standing near the base of the silo were thrown by the blast. The roof of the silo catapulted into the air. Debris rained all over. Some hit the extended arm of the aerial truck that was parked on the southeast side of the silo. Some hit people standing nearby.
Concrete flew as far as 1,000 feet away, landing in the Protestant Evangelical cemetery across the road. Someone called 911 again: “We just had a silo blow up.”
Between 1992 and 2003, firefighters of the New Knoxville Fire Department (NKFD) were called to Hoge Lumber 21 times. Many of those calls were for fires burning in one of the three silos on the property. These structures stored sawdust and other wood shavings and chips produced by the company, material then used to power a boiler.
This boiler once generated enough electricity for all of the nearby town’s needs, as well as about 20 percent of neighboring St. Mary’s. Though no longer used in the same capacity, the boiler and the silo in recent years continued to provide the company’s electricity.
Oct. 1, 2003
6:50 a.m.
The sun rises; the air is cool and crisp.
John Hoge, one of Hoge Lumber’s four co-owners, pulls into the parking lot in his white Mercury Grand Marquis. He steps out of the car and begins to walk to the back door of the office when he notices an odor of smoke.
He goes out to the plant to find the main plant engineer, Todd Eberle. John tells Eberle to go check on the silo.
Eberle walks outside and over to the silo and opens the access door to the auger pit. He sees a light amount of smoke and a red glow. He throws the door shut and sprints back to John to report a fire.
Two of the silos at Hoge Lumber have an auger, a corkscrew-shaped tool. Augers commonly reach depths of 3 to 4 feet. The drill bits on augers can range in length from 2 to 18 inches and in diameter from 4 to 18 inches.
Augers are typically used for drilling holes in different types of construction. Installing telephone poles, for example. They can also be used for gardening, woodworking and drilling into ice.
Rather than drilling, augers in silos move the sawdust and debris inside the silo down into what is called the auger pit. Here the auger drops the material onto a conveyor belt, which transports it to the boiler. The auger pit and conveyor are sealed inside the concrete structure of the silo, so the system is able to heat up pretty quickly if something goes wrong.
In this incident, a pulley on the conveyor belt malfunctioned, causing friction and heat. This and the storage material — woodchips — made conditions perfect for a fire.
6:57 a.m.
John calls 911.
“Hi, this is John Hoge at Hoge Lumber in New Knoxville. We have a fire in the bottom of a silo. I don’t think it’s an emergency per se, but I think it’s more than what we can get out ourselves.”
7:03 a.m.
Five firefighters of the NKFD are the first to arrive, including chief Scott Schroer.
This group arrives within six minutes; the fire department is located just three blocks north.
Within two minutes, the rest of the crew arrives. Firefighters pour out of the different trucks and haul their equipment to the silo. Some begin spraying water through the auger pit access door.
There was low visibility from the bottom of the silo. Schroer wants to send a few men to gauge conditions from the top. A ladder on the side of the silo seems promising, but it doesn’t have a cage. Schroer feels it to be too dangerous for climbing.
7:25 a.m.
The NKFD is a volunteer fire department and has a limited amount of equipment. It lacks an aerial truck. Luckily, a neighboring department, the New Bremen Fire Department (NBFD) has a few more people and an aerial truck. Schroer calls the NBFD for back-up.
7:36 a.m.
New Bremen’s aerial unit arrives quickly. The truck parks on the north side of the silo.
Wisps of light gray smoke rise from the top and more smoke pours out of the access door while Schroer speaks with two NBFD firefighters about sending some of the crew up in the aerial apparatus.
He orders two NBFD firefighters, Ken Jutte and John Garman, and another unnamed NKFD firefighter to go up to examine the conditions within the silo as well as its structure.
The three try to do as Schroer ordered, but the smoke inside obscured all views. They descend to regroup.
One of the major questions that came up after the incident was whether the structure was a conventional or oxygen-limiting silo.
Conventional silos typically have a dome roof or a triangular roof with an open hatch. They also typically have a chute where air can enter or leave. Oxygen-limiting silos have a flatter roof and are almost entirely closed off, except for small rubber hatches. These hatches should be kept tightly sealed so that the oxygen concentration inside the silo is kept low. If the hatches are left open, or if there is faulty maintenance on the silo, heating and pressure build.
While Schroer, Jutte, Garman and the unnamed firefighter reconvened, firefighters on the ground attempt to remove some of the material from the auger pit. They shovel out piles of sawdust and wood scraps.
Others work to remove some of the smoke by placing two positive pressure ventilation (PPV) fans on the west side of the silo. That way, firefighters could enter from the east and see inside. The fans couldn’t work fast enough, however. Heavy smoke remains.
8:24 a.m.
A couple other firefighters examine the thermal imaging camera (TIC) that they used on the exterior walls of the silo to locate the hottest spots inside. They are on the west and east sides about 15 feet up from the ground.
They are growing quickly. Nothing is diminishing the fire.
John Hoge helped design the Hoge Lumber silos, and while he didn’t know whether they were conventional or oxygen-limiting, a later investigation suggested the latter.
After an explosion of an oxygen-limiting silo in 1985, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) conducted a case study of the event to determine how such fires should be fought. The study recommended leaving silo hatches closed, to keep from introducing extra oxygen.
In the Hoge Lumber case, firefighters had hatches open both at the top and the bottom, to remove the silo’s contents from the bottom and to spray water inside from the top. In addition to the danger of open hatches, water streams can introduce extra oxygen. Dennis Cummings, a veteran fire investigator, supported these findings in the Hoge Lumber case.
Both Cummings and the NIOSH report state that instead of attempting to extinguish the fire, firefighters should have inserted an inert gas, such as liquid nitrogen, and sealed off the structure.
Due to a lack of research on oxygen-limiting silos, the firefighters unwittingly made the conditions of the fire much worse.
Schroer tells John and Garman to go up to the top of the silo again, along with another NBFD firefighter, Scott Albers, to spray water inside. They squeeze into the basket again and begin the ride up. Once at the top, Jutte and Albers get out and climb onto the roof, while Garman stays in the basket.
Jutte connects a hose to the water supply and circles it around the hole on the top of the silo. Albers lowers the nozzle down into the hole and they turn it on, pumping water in.
On the ground, firefighters had located a small side hatch that happened to be positioned below one of the major hot spots. They see that inside the silo, the pile of sawdust and wood scraps was stacked up about 20 feet high.
Some begin to pull some material out of the hatch for easier access, while another prods at the pile with a 10-foot-long metal rod. Soon there is a big enough gap to get a hose into the silo.
Schroer intently watches the aerial crew. He directs them to change the nozzle on their hose to one with a different type of spray. Garman shuts the hose off and Albers starts pulling it out.
The crew seems to be making good progress.
Then firefighters and others nearby hear a giant gust of air being sucked up into the silo.
Moments later, it explodes.
One firefighter from the NKFD, Brent Lauth, was standing at the base of the silo, within touching distance, when some debris hits him in the back of the leg.
John, who was standing about 50 yards away, looks up to see a small but sharp piece of concrete coming toward his head. It hits his forehead, dragging a big gash between his eyes, down the side of his nose and through his lips.
A larger chunk falls toward John’s son and another of the company’s co-owners, Jack Hoge, who was standing close to his dad. He tries to duck but the concrete hits his back, knocking him face down onto the ground. The blow breaks several of his ribs.
Nancy Buschur, a nurse who coincidentally lived two doors down from Hoge Lumber and heard the explosion, rushes over to help with the injured.
Firefighters begin to shout. Some immediately tend to injuries while others search for Jutte, Garman and Albers, who were still at the top of the silo when it exploded.
Clark Froning, another of Hoge Lumber’s co-owners, rushes over to Jack to help him sit upright.
Soon, about a dozen Auglaize County emergency personnel respond to the scene in various ambulances. The first ambulance takes Jutte away.
Upon arrival at Joint Township District Memorial Hospital in St. Mary’s, he is pronounced dead. The 70-foot fall broke someribs and other bones and lacerated some of his internal organs.
Sometime after, a care flight helicopter flies in and lands in the cornfield between the plant and the farm next door. It takes Garman and Albers to St. Rita’s Medical Center in Lima.
Garman is pronounced dead at 11:27 a.m.
Albers miraculously survives the long fall. He lands in the right side of a dumpster. Half of it was filled with chunks of concrete; the other half contained cardboard and sawdust. “Next thing I know, I was mid-air, and I heard the guys yelling,” Albers recalled later. “I blacked out and landed, and I must have woken up right away because I could still hear rocks falling.”
He feels the rocks ricochet off his helmet and suit. The impact of the landing breaks both of the lower bones in his left leg, and his wrist is jammed so severely that the end of a bone in his arm is chipped. He is able to turn his head enough to yell for help and several emergency personnel come to him immediately.
“Thank God for dumpsters that day, I can tell you that. I must have hit it just right. It could have been a lot worse.”
Once the people with the most severe injuries are tended to and taken away to the hospital, things slow down.
Most of the emergency personnel and firefighters work to ensure people’s injuries were stable. A few EMTs wait in parked ambulances on the outside of the action.
Bruce Hoge, Hoge Lumber’s fourth co-owner, storms over to one of the EMTs to question why nothing was happening.
“What’s taking so long?!” he exclaims. “We need to get going and get these guys out of here.”
Eventually, Jack, John and the others with less severe injuries are taken to Joint Township.
The incident is unlike any other that the hospital has seen. Staff members are forced to enact the hospital’s disaster plan for the first time ever. The nurses and doctors in the emergency room do not have enough hands on deck and are immediately overwhelmed by the number of people coming in. People in other departments of the hospital are called in to help.
Back at the scene, as the chaos with the explosion and the injuries began to settle, firefighters attempt to extinguish the fire by pumping water through the now-exposed roof. Crews from the St. Mary’s Township Fire Department, St. Mary’s City Fire Department and the Wapakoneta Fire Department all come to help.
Fire chiefs from other surrounding towns, like Elida and Sidney, also arrive to offer opinions on how to fight the fire.
The explosion causes a bunch of concrete to entangle in the arm of NBFD’s aerial truck. The crew from the Wapakoneta department brings a crane and another ladder truck with them to help remove the debris.
Meanwhile, around 2 p.m., cracks in the silo appear. Keith Loreno, the state fire marshal investigator, arrives to Hoge Lumber shortly prior to assess the situation. Loreno examines the silo and declares it not in danger of falling.
Because the silo had already exploded, there is nothing much more that firefighters could do except let the fire burn , while monitoring it to make sure it doesn’t get out of control.
Two days later, the fire finally dissolved.
