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Water tank explodes near West Hills College causing death and injuring worker
Following the incident, Lemoore police officers were on the scene, keeping people from accessing the scene. According to city officials, there were three contractors and one city employee working on the tank at the time of the incident.
According to City Manager Nathan Olson, as the workers dealt with the tank, it suddenly exploded, and the tank lifted off the pad, causing 1.5 million gallons of water to dump.
Classes at West Hills College were canceled Monday, and students were told to stay away, but college officials indicated the school would open Tuesday.
Olson said he would deliver an update during an afternoon press conference at 4:30 p.m. at the Cinnamon Municipal Complex. “The investigation is ongoing,” said Olson in an interview with The Leader.
“The press conference is going to give an update. We’re going to give basically where we are (in the investigation). We declared an emergency at 12:45 p.m. this afternoon.”
Olson also told The Leader that due to the incident, the City lost three wells: 7, 13, and 14. “So all our westside wells are out of commission until further notice. That means we’re struggling with pressure right now, and we’re going to shut down all watering until further notice from the city.”
Lemoore has already shut off water to the town’s parks, and city officials ask that residents refrain from watering their lawns until further notice. Lemoore already has fairly restrictive water days, allowing residents to water just two times a week.
“We were having a really hard time with water pressure at certain times of high use, so if we had a fire, we wouldn’t be adequately covered with enough pressure to provide fire suppression for the city. That’s the biggest issue right now – fire safety and suppression.”
The incident killed a contractor and injured a city worker. Referring to the explosion as a “water tsunami,” Olson said that the large sudden rush of water released from the tank caused extensive damage which led to the death of the contractor. Olson, at an afternoon press conference identified the contractor as 41-year-old Dion Jones, who was married with three children and had worked for Filanc Construction for 16 years.
“So, basically, the tsunami carried the boom truck he was in on a wave. When it (the water wave) came to rest, the truck flipped over on its side, so he was basically body slammed into the ground.”
At the time of the incident, the workers were finishing up a job on the large tank adjacent to West Hills College Lemoore. It was basically a routine job, and they were removing a pipe that was no longer needed when disaster struck.
“The three wells that feed into the westside tanks are undamaged,” said Olson. “The wells themselves are operational. We have no power and no way to get the water into a tank and treat it with chlorine because we’ve lost all “com” (communications).”
He added that chlorination equipment to treat the water was also seriously damaged when the tank went down.
What caused the incident? City officials aren’t sure, but Cal/OSHA (Division of Occupational Safety and Health) will soon be on the site to try and determine the cause.
In the meantime, Olson says the city is doing what they can to get the wells up and running, and that includes looking for portable chlorination equipment to begin treating the water again.
“The goals are to get the wells up to treat the chlorine like we did in the past, and then we’ll have to deal with everything else. We have a structural engineer coming out to inspect the north tank.
“Right now, there are a lot of unknowns, so until Ca/OSHA gets out here and unless we start peeling back the onion, I don’t know the extent of the damages,” said Olson.
Olson told The Leader that ultimately the cause of the explosion would be determined. However, he offered an early thought “I would say there was some kind of gas trapped in the headspace of the tank. We don’t know what kind of gas. We’re trying to determine that.”
