Fumes inside the huge tank create a blast at a Brandon convenience store.
By JANET ZINK
Published November 20, 2003
[Times photo: Skip O'Rourke]
Firefighters battle a blaze Wednesday afternoon at a convenience store in Brandon. The fire started after a worker who was helping remove old fuel tanks cut into a tank that was still contaminated, causing an explosion that killed him and injured another. The blast also set fire to the store.
BRANDON - It was just after noon Wednesday when Pete Watson started cutting a hole in the end of a massive old gasoline tank.
The 8,000-gallon steel cylinder was supposed to be free of fuel and gasoline fumes, like the other two the cleanup crew had pulled out of the ground at the Victory Market at the northeast corner of Bloomingdale Avenue and Providence Road.
But this one was still contaminated.
As the saw blade ripped into the rusty metal, sparks ignited the fumes and the tank blew up, said fire rescue spokesman Chip Branam. That blast touched off propane tanks in a rack outside the convenience store, adding to the fireball that flared across the site, he said. Watson died at the scene.
The blast also set fire to the store at 11102 Bloomingdale Ave., which had been closed Wednesday for the tank removal. The building was gutted before firefighters could douse the flames.
Watson, 34, of Lutz, was one of nine workers on the site. A passer-by encountered another worker who had been injured.
Waiel Bayyat said he got to the scene before the first firetruck. As he drove east on Bloomingdale toward Providence, he ran into a thick wall of black smoke and saw bright orange flames shooting from the top of the building.
He pulled into a gas station across the street and saw one of the workers wandering through the parking lot, in a daze.
"He had burns on the back and front, hair singed, cuts on his face and arms," Bayyat said. "He finally stopped and just kept saying he was cold."
Officials said Rick Parker of Winter Haven was taken to Tampa General Hospital. Hospital officials did not release details on his condition. The seven other workers were unharmed.
The blast forced the evacuation of nearby businesses and closed a portion of Providence Road until late afternoon.
The workers were from QRC Inc., a pollutant container contractor based in Lutz.
Property owner Carol Lamonte said the aging gas tanks were being removed to prepare for a possible sale of the land.
The three 8,000-gallon tanks, which measure about 8-feet tall and 25-feet long, were removed from the ground this week. They needed to be opened and cleaned before being hauled off the property, officials said.
Harry Stobaugh, chief mechanical inspector in the county building department, said QRC is bonded and licensed to perform tank removal and had a permit for the project. QRC officials could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
The explosion rocked the surrounding area, rattling windows a quarter of a mile away, neighbors said. Thick black smoke could be seen for miles.
Tonya Dempster had just dropped her son off at a nearby preschool and was turning from Bloomingdale Avenue onto Providence Road when the impact of the blast rocked her sport utility vehicle onto two wheels before it dropped back down.
"I can't believe it didn't blow my windows out," she said.
David Froelich was helping a customer in Coo's Nest, an antique and used furniture store next to the Victory Market at the time of the blast.
"All of a sudden we heard an extremely loud boom - the largest I've ever heard - and I was in the military," Froelich said. Ceiling tiles began dropping, and his pictures flew off the walls.
Courtney Nichols, a 15-year-old Riverview High student, was at home dunking potato chips into ranch dressing when the force of the explosion shook the walls of the house.
"It was so scary," she said as she joined dozens of people along Bloomingdale, watching the fire crews douse the charred building. "I can't believe it. That's where I buy my chips every morning before school. Now it's just gone."
- Staff writer Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler contributed to this report.
