Copyright USGenNet Inc., 2017 All Rights Reserved USGenNet Data Repository Please read USGenNet Copyright Statement on this page: Transcribed and submitted by Linda Talbott for the USGenNet Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ =========================================================================== Formatted by USGenNet Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott All of the above information must remain when copied or downloaded. =========================================================================== Chicago Tribune December 12, 1971 17 Workers Killed in Explosion in Tunnel Under Lake Huron. PORT HURON, Mich., Dec. 11 (API) Larry Burner,25, the first man to At least 17 construction workers died walk out of the tunnel, said he saw under avalanches of twisted sheet metal rocks and metal flying and felt him- and broken concrete today when a nat- self blown 10 feet. He left his father ural gas explosion ripped a tunnel being and youngest brother behind in the col- built 250 feet below Lake Huron. lapsed structure. "We were standing up there and the Seven men were carried from the five- next thing I knew I was blown 10 feet," mile-long tunnel in critical condtion. he said. "Rocks, metal started flying. The remaining 14 of the 38 men who were It lasted that way for 10 minutes." in the tunnel managed to escape on their own. Burner, a native of Tennessee who had worked on the project several The critically injured and those with months, said his father and brother only minor injuries were taken to Port were on the other side of the pile of Huron hospitals. Extra blood was sum- debris after the explosion. moned and beds were set up to handle "There was a sort of door and we the injured. pecked on it and they got tapping back," he said. Shortly before midnight workers began Then they tried again, he said, and removing bodies from the 18-foot-wide "Nothing." tunnel after rescue operations had been "Man, I don't know what happened." suspended about four hours to pump A volunteer fireman, one of the first toxic gases from the shaft. to crawl thru the wreckage to the side of the explosion, said he counted at The bodies were taken to a temporary least 15 dead men scattered in the morgue at Port Huron General Hospital blast area. for identification. "I saw a lot of dead people, and a lot of people seriously hurt," said Earlier, families of the dead workers Bob Meese, the volunteer fireman. huddled in a Quonset hut near the elev- ator shaft into the tunnel, some crying. Couldn't Believe His Eyes "I'll be here all night or however long it takes to get my dad out," Terry "It was unbelievable. My eyes couldn't Nipper, 22, son of one of the men in- believe it. What it did to the steel side said. alone in that tunnel was unbelievable, let alone what it did to the bodies." The workmen were pouring reinforcing Several workmen on the cofferdam concrete into the sides of the tunnel surrounding the intake shaft five miles about one and one-half miles offshore into Lake Huron were blown off and into when it blew up. the water by the force of the blast al- most four miles away. They were rescued First Man to Escape by a tugboat which had been standing by. The tunnel is being built to carry The tunnel was part of a system de- water from an intake to a filtration signed to meet the water needs of south- plant in Lakeport, about five miles east Michigan into the next century. north of Port Huron, and then thru an It starts from a cavern almost 250 82-miles pipeline to Detroit and 85 feet below a wheat field on the shore other southeast Michigan communites. of Lake Huron, then pitches upward thru the 100-foot thick shale of the lake bottom to meet with a giant water in- take in the clear waters of Lake Huron. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Victims List Manuel Abasta, 31 Martin Laretz, 25 Romualdo Alvares, 40 Frank E. Polk, 27 James Beesely, 34 James Reighard, 30 Roswell Brown, 43 Gary Roehm, 20 Raymond N. Comeau, 35 Claybourne Simkins, 38 Gerald Curtis, 32 Guillermo Teran, 36 Patrick Dingman, 35 Glen Verner, 44 Charles Epperson, 44 Keith Verner, 21 Donald Fogal, Jr., 21 Donald Williams, 41 Donald Hardel, 30 Walter J. Woods, 36 Kenneth Hawes, 33 Vernard Woolstenhulme, 63 =========================================================================================