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A car is seen in the foreground at the fire site. (Photo courtesy Finnegan Photograph Collection, The Valentine)
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Three Richmond firefighters monitor the blaze. (Photo courtesy Finnegan Photograph Collection, The Valentine)
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Firefighters take a break from battling the fire at the Little Oil facility off Interstate 95 south of Richmond. (Photo courtesy Finnegan Photograph Collection, The Valentine)
Morris “Butch” Englehart worked the graveyard shift at the Little Oil storage and shipping facility off Interstate 95 south of Richmond. Around midnight on June 26, 1975, he needed to move his car from the entrance gate to make way for a shipment of fuel. He smelled gas, but he didn’t see any.
When he turned the ignition, Englehart’s world exploded.
Burned over more than half of his body, he staggered a mile to telephone for help. The Medical College of Virginia hospital listed Englehart in critical condition. Meanwhile, flames consumed his stalled vehicle.
Over at the Engine Co. 20 station on Forest Hill Avenue, firefighters lounging outside in the night air witnessed a flash of light followed by the street lamps going out. They saw a glow in the sky and figured they’d hear something soon.
Fire units responded by 12:13 a.m. Within an hour, 15 companies with more than 100 firefighters converged at the site, leaving eight companies remaining to cover the city, Henrico and Chesterfield.
A lack of fire hydrants made the work challenging. Hoses ran three quarters of a mile from Goodes Road over Interstate 95, through a large ditch, across the Seaboard Coast Line Railway tracks and into a gully between the tanks and the interstate.
A tank that buckled under the pressure of the heat (Photo courtesy Finnegan Photograph Collection, The Valentine)
Two storage tanks burned and two others buckled under the pressure of the heat. Tank No. 1, with 250,000 gallons of gasoline, shot fire through top vents. Tank No. 2, holding 650,000 gallons of high-test gasoline, collapsed. It resembled a crushed aluminum can. A great gust of fire near the top of Tank No. 3 caused a brief flareup. Flames at one point leaped 500 feet into the air.
“We don’t know what it’s going to do,” Richmond Fire Chief John F. Finnegan Jr. told the Richmond News Leader’s Bill Wasson. “It’s a ticklish situation.”
A million gallons of water from two or three cannon hoses poured onto the fire without much effect. By 8 a.m., the fire had eased, but shifting winds renewed the pre-dawn ferocity. Flame-retardant foam sprayers, including the Byrd Airport crash truck, failed to make a difference, and by mid-morning, they were out of juice.
The interstate became a staging area for the firefighters and their equipment, and Richmond traffic came to a standstill. Northbound motorists got directed into Chester, while southbound drivers turned onto Maury Street. Nearer the scene of the fire, spectators gathered on the usually busy interstate lanes to watch. Finnegan told the state police to clear them away.
Unable to do much, firefighters sat on their trucks, some taking pictures of the fire, and ate sandwiches supplied by the American Red Cross and Salvation Army volunteers.
Just before noon, a massive fireball erupted from the crumpled tank, sending firemen, reporters and onlookers scurrying.
Near the Chesterfield County courthouse, a pimply-faced kid with his father’s multiband radio intently listened to the emergency services and news broadcasts, recorded them and transcribed the event for his journal. That kid was me. I still have the journal.
I captured WRVA radio anchor Tim Timberlake describing the scene from a helicopter at around noon: “You can see now, the third tank’s top has been pried off — almost like being opened by a can opener. Fuel is leaking from the third tank, and fire is at the base of it, but it does not look like the third tank is burning as bad as the others, but the fuel leaking out is feeding the flames.”
On the ground, WRVA’s Walt Williams said, “You can feel the heat all the way onto Commerce Road. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Several men shoot foam at a burning oil tank. (Photo courtesy Finnegan Photograph Collection, The Valentine)
Finnegan queried Navy officials in Norfolk about using “light water,” a type of fire foam that can be shot a longer distance. He told the Navy that he didn’t have the authority to contract the equipment and asked, “Does the government furnish this service for free?”
A fire department dispatcher soon declared with a dramatic flourish, “The chief fire marshal of the 5th Naval District is flying down here, by helicopter, to talk with [City Manager William] Leidinger and Chief Finnegan. They will land at Byrd Airport.”
Following the flash of Tank No. 3, the embattled firefighters scurried to save not just themselves but their equipment. They soaked the Seaboard Coastline tracks to prevent the ties from burning. Six tank cars were moved away.
A police escort brought a convoy of suppressant trucks from Norfolk Naval Air Station, Oceana Naval Air Station and Langley Field, and they included foam used by the Navy’s firefighting school.
“When we go in, we go in fours with those units,” Finnegan instructed his command on the radio. “We’ll have to coordinate it. [The Navy foam trucks] should be here in 15 minutes, but it might be an hour after we get through talkin’.”
Three Navy trucks started their efforts at 4:20 p.m., spraying, as the News Leader’s Wasson put it, “a blizzard of white foam.”
Around 5 p.m., Richmond firefighter Charles W. Sullivan, Byrd Airport security officer O.J. Long and Air National Guard Sgt. Clyde Reese pulled on asbestos suits to successfully shut two open valves on Tank No. 1 that allowed the escape of high-test gasoline. The action, however, sent Sullivan to MCV after the heat overwhelmed him.
The foam trucks barely stayed ahead of the fire; as they ran out of their suppressant, the News Leader reported, “the burning gasoline billowed up in flames again” and threatened to consume a Navy crash truck.
By dusk, however, the reinforcements managed to get the fire under control, although several companies remained to keep an eye on things.
As the foam guttered the remaining fire, Little Oil Co. President C. Malcolm Little Jr. observed, “It could have been a whole lot worse.” The tanks were insured, equipment was replaced and the one man seriously injured, Englehart, survived.
