Foundry blast jars Tacoma

Fire filled the sky over Tacoma's Nalley Valley industrial area Saturday afternoon when a tanker-truck explosion at a foundry sent flames reportedly as high as 1,000 feet in the air.

The explosion at Atlas Castings & Technology sent four people to the hospital, closed a major highway and backed up traffic on nearby roads.

A fire at the foundry was still burning late Saturday night, and firefighters were working to cool additional propane tanks on site so they would not blow up.

"What happens is in a contained vessel, if you have a product inside boil and then expand and there is nowhere for it to go — if it doesn't release fast enough — that's where you get the explosion," said Jolene Davis, deputy chief of the Tacoma Fire Department. "So we are still concerned. ... It's not like a structure fire where the risk kind of goes down."

The nearly three dozen Atlas employees working Saturday were accounted for, fire officials said.

Three foundry employees were taken to St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma. Hospital officials said one suffered facial burns and was in stable condition. The other two suffered leg and knee injuries and would likely be discharged, according to a nursing supervisor at the hospital.

The fourth injured person, the driver of the propane truck, reportedly in his 60s, was airlifted to Seattle's Harborview Medical Center, where he was in critical condition Saturday night, according to The Associated Press.

Firefighters arrived shortly after the 3 p.m. blast at the foundry. A propane tank on site also caught fire but did not explode, according to Dan Crotty, assistant fire chief at the Tacoma Fire Department.

The foundry, at 3021 S. Wilkeson St., is in the Nalley Valley, an industrial area, with homes on the surrounding hills, near the intersection of I-5 and Highway 16.

Trooper Brandy Kessler of the State Patrol said the events started when a delivery truck, loaded with 8,000 gallons of propane, exploded at the foundry, starting a fire in a nearby propane tank.

Kessler said the foundry had two tanks, one with a capacity of 20,000 gallons, and another with 14,000 gallons. Both were estimated to be about half-full.

The explosion backed up traffic for miles on Interstate 5 and closed Highway 16 between I-5 and Union Street, forcing drivers to find back roads to get to Gig Harbor and other communities.

Witnesses miles away felt the explosions and said they saw flames shoot up as much as 1,000 feet in the air. A Tacoma Police officer who asked to remain anonymous said that "it looked like the atom bomb, like the mushroom cloud."

Steve Lawson, a salesman at the nearby Titus-Will car dealership, said he went outside after he heard the explosion to see flames shooting up in the air and stretching as wide as 300 to 400 feet. He said it was like a bomb going off.

He said his wife, Carla, called him afterward to say she had just driven by and could feel the heat through the floor boards of her car.

Joan Malloy, a lifelong Tacoma resident, had just gotten out of the shower when she felt the explosion.

"It sounded like my house was exploding," she said. "I was scared. The whole house shook — 'Well, I'm a goner.' "

Josh Gronka works at Budget Batteries, about a mile east of the foundry.

"None of us were sure what happened. It was really scary," he said. "It was the loudest, most overwhelming explosion I've ever felt. It shook the ground."

Crotty said fire officials evacuated people from around the foundry, an area that stretched from South M Street to Pine Street, and from South Tacoma Way to Center Street.

The fire continued at the foundry late into the evening as the remaining propane burned off from the tank. The first firefighters who arrived aimed high-powered hoses at the other propane tanks on site to keep them cool, Crotty said.

"That's the best we can do at this time," he said. He said the first firefighters to arrive took considerable risk by getting close enough to train hoses on the remaining full propane tanks.

Davis, the deputy fire chief, said the blast blew out windows in nearby industrial buildings, and the axle from the propane truck that exploded was found on Highway 16, at least four blocks away.

Tacoma Public Utilities reported about 13,000 homes and businesses without power for about 30 minutes after the explosion. The fire affected two substations, said utility spokesman Randy Stearnes. Power was restored to most of the customers by midnight.

According to its Web site, Atlas Castings & Technology, formerly known as Atlas Foundry & Machine Co., produces cast parts, some as large as 48,000 pounds, in more than 100 different alloys of carbon steel, low-alloy steel, stainless steel and nickel base material.

The company was founded in 1899, making iron castings for the logging industry. According to its Web site, it occupies 18 acres with more than 500,000 square feet of manufacturing space. The company has worked around the world. Last year it built a steel cylinder that helped anchor a floating rig off the coast of South Africa, and the company also has clients in China.

Last May, the company was taken over by AmeriCast, based in Atchison, Kan., and continued to produce steel casting for oil and gas and other power-generation industries, as well as the U.S. Navy.

In 2002, a fire ripped through the foundry, causing about $850,000 in damage. That fire started in an area where some welding was done after a welding remnant apparently smoldered, officials said.

Investigators with the state Department of Labor and Industries will be looking into Saturday's accident, according to department spokesman Steve Pierce.

Tricia Duryee: 206-464-3283 or tduryee@seattletimes.com. Seattle Times reporters Linda Shaw, Susan Gilmore, Charles E. Brown and David Turim contributed to this report.