Explosion in Dawson Creek? A year or so ago I posted about Dawson Creek, British Columbia, a tightly knit little community, isolated from the rest of the world by distance and geography and weather. The community had no idea that WWII had put them center stage in the war effort. The invasion of the US Army Corps of Engineers stunned and overwhelmed them.
Link to another story “Out of Dawson Creek”
Wayne Wilson commented on that post.
“I was born in Dawson Creek. My dad had a butcher shop. They originally homesteaded. When they had the explosion his shop windows were blown out. I’ve been told many stories about those days.”
“…they had the explosion.”?!!!
I responded to Wayne, promising to post the story. It’s a great one and too few people know it.
February 15, 1943. The Corps of Engineers has been “in country” for a year. The Army has surrounded Dawson Creek with military facilities, storage, repair shops, mess halls, etc. A former livery barn downtown, precious empty space, has accumulated stacks of miscellany. Telephone cable, tools, tires, kegs of nails…
It has also accumulated a truckload of dynamite, stored by one contractor. And a number of cases of percussion caps stored by another.
No one knows how the fire started. And when the volunteer firefighters arrived, no one knew about the dynamite—or the percussion caps. Given their extremely limited resources—Dawson Creek had no water system—the firemen settled for letting the old livery burn, dampening the surrounding buildings to keep the fire from spreading.
People gathered to the excitement. Passengers disembarked from an arriving train and rushed to join the crowd. Word began to spread among the firefighters about the dynamite in the truck they tried to start and back out of the inferno, but the construction men among them knew the dynamite would simply burn, not explode. They didn’t know about the percussion caps which would make all the difference.
The old livery literally blasted into the air, momentarily snuffing out the original fire but scattering fire brands all over the little town.
Dorthea Calverley described the result in an article on the website of the North Peace Historical Society:
“The burning building and its contents — completely red-hot — went hundreds of feet in the air. Where the brightness of flames had been a second before there was a momentary blackness as the fire was snuffed out like a candle. But a few minutes later there were hundreds of small fires as debris came down over a block away in all directions. Worst was the thousands of miles of copper wire which unrolled from its reels and tied everything in its tangled coils. Over a block away a school nurse, driving her car, was startled by a flaming auto tire descending on her car’s radiator to hang and flame on.”
To read Dorothea’s full account, follow this link. It is fascinating and very well written.