Most steam era locomotive boiler explosions lack internet documentation, color photos, and video. A 2007 explosion has been well documented. There was one serious injury and no deaths.

http://www.ipemaritimes.com/bxpl.pdf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WoA2mxtSHU

I had seen the video of this explosion before, but this was the first time I'd seen the report to go with it. It is amazing that there was only one injury and no fatalities considering the whole boiler flew through a wall and into the production area. And that was just at 150 psi.

Something doesn't look right. The boilers in the video do not match the photos of the boilers in the report.

Good eye. I had looked at the video one day and saved it and then read the report another and posted them together. The boilers in the video are watertube and both are still in place after the explosion. The boiler in the report is a firetube and does not remain in the same location. If you read the youtube comments you will see someone pointed that out as well.

Nevertheless both are real eye openers and clearly show that boilers are to be respected, maintained properly, and operated by trained operators.

The description says the explosion happened in an adjacent room. Not sure what that is exploding at 1:19 but it looks like it was caused by the actual explosion from behind it possibly.

One thing I found interesting at any rate was how quickly things in the environment of that room changed. If you look on the left hand side there is a green pipe, possibly a riser, with a valve on it. Looking at the video frame-by-frame, you can see the hand wheel is fine at 1:18 and then warped at 1:19.

Seattle Times-
Saturday, November 24, 1990
Man Dies In Mobile-Boiler Explosion -- Cars Damaged In Blast At Pier 91
Article Link

Note:
This explosion was of a 1952 Cleaver-Brooks 200 HP Scotch dry-back fire tube boiler. It and 3 others had been surplussed from the Yakima Firing Range by the Army. The boiler service company had bought it for portable rental service. Notice the service technician was fatally injured. He actually rode the front of the boiler for 900 ft as it hop-scotched 3 times across a parking lot until it hit a bumper post protecting a fire hydrant. The boiler traveled several hundred more feet through a lot of brand new Nissans before coming to a rest. The furnace collapsed upward from the bottom, basically forming a jet nozzle for the escaping water flashing to steam propulsion. The technician was known, HOWEVER, notice the medical examiner required dental records to establish positive identification. Several small welds were found at the fracture initiation site at the bottom of the furnace just inside the rear tube sheet. It apparently had a small crack that had been "just welded over" (seal welded) instead of properly investigated. The furnace wall thickness had been reduced to critical thickness by erosion and corrosion.


Seattle Times
Saturday, November 24, 1990 - Page updated at 12:00 AM

Man Dies In Mobile-Boiler Explosion -- Cars Damaged In Blast At Pier 91

One man was killed yesterday when a mobile boiler exploded at an oil storage and shipping terminal at Pier 91.

The force of the blast hurled the pickup-sized boiler hundreds of yards, according to a Seattle Fire Department estimate.

The boiler struck and destroyed several new cars parked in a Port of Seattle storage area and punched through a chain-link fence before it rolled to a stop alongside Burlington Northern railroad tracks.

The concussion damaged several other cars and some equipment in an adjoining waste-oil reprocessing plant.

Normally about five or six employees would have been working near the boiler, but most were off on a long Thanksgiving holiday.

The victim was working on a mobile boiler installed for temporary use by Pacific Northern Oil Co., a firm that supplies freighters with bunker fuel.

The medical examiner's office said it would need to examine dental records and probably wouldn't identify the victim before Monday.

Steve Politeo, operations manager for Pacific Northern Oil Co., said the boiler had been installed by Bosler Energy Systems Inc., so the plant's regular boiler could be shut down for maintenance.

The mobile boiler, which was outdoors, was to have begun operation yesterday, he said.

Normally bunker fuel is heavy and thick. Steam is used to heat the oil in storage tanks so it can be pumped aboard ships.

There were no eyewitnesses, but the blast shook the Pier 91 area north of the Magnolia Bridge.

``My knees were buckling. It sounded like a jet flying over at Mach 1,'' said Harlan Odegard, an employee of City Ice, a cold-storage plant across a driveway from Pacific Northern Oil.

The explosion, at about 2:30 p.m., rattled the warehouse where he was working and knocked fluorescent tubes from the overhead lights, Odegard said.

Copyright (c) 1990 Seattle Times Company, All Rights Reserved.