Explosion at Priest Rapids Dam

DESERT AIRE — An explosion at nearby Priest Rapids Dam Thursday afternoon, caused by the malfunction of electrical equipment, burned six Grant County PUD employees, five of whom were airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Harborview is the principal trauma hospital for the Northwest. As of noon Friday, it listed two of the victims in critical condition and the other three in satisfactory condition.

By 9 a.m. Monday, there was improvement for four of the victims. One was discharged over the weekend. Three remain at Harborview, one in satisfactory condition, one in critical condition, and one has improved to serious condition.

“I can think of nothing worse than one of our employees not returning home to see their family at the end of a workday. We continue to rally around these employees and their families to provide whatever support we can,” said Grant PUD General Manager Tony Webb.

Names were withheld by the PUD as a courtesy to the families. All of the injured were men.

According to PUD Publicist Thomas Stredweck, the explosion occurred at about 4:15 p.m. Grant County Fire District No. 8 at Mattawa received the call at 4:30. Chief Dave Patterson and EMT Barbara Davis Wilson arrived on the scene at 4:38.

Other emergency personnel started arriving at about the same time. There were a total of nine District 8 EMTs. There were six from the Hanford Fire Department. And there was one fire truck from District 8.

“We had no idea what we were dealing with, but from the sound of the all we suspected something big,” Patterson said.

It turned out the truck was not needed.

In addition to the personnel, District 8 sent two ambulances. Hanford sent ambulances and so did District 3 at Quincy. Two Medstar helicopters and one Medstar airplane were used.

“While we were driving there, we already had Medstar launched and on the way,” Patterson said.

Patterson’s biggest worry was airway damage to the victims. The victims could have inhaled fire or heat and done internal damage to themselves. EMTs checked all the victims carefully and were satisfied that hadn’t occurred.

“All of the victims were coherent,” Patterson said.

“They could tell us what had happened,” Wilson Davis said.

Patterson said the EMTs administered all of the stabilization measures they could and moved the victims as quickly as possible to hospitals.

The Desert Aire Airport became a hub of activity. Ambulances took the most severely burned victims there to be placed on a Medstar plane. A Quincy ambulance was there in case it was needed.

Fortunately, DAA Manager Karl Gruber said, the repaved runway had been opened just two days earlier. Volunteers are still installing the runway lighting.

“We took both of the most severe cases and allowed the Medstar nurses to decide which one needed to go to Seattle right away and which one could go to Kadlec (Medical Center in Richland),” Patterson said.

Patterson estimates the victim on the plane was at Haborview an hour later. The other man was taken back to the dam, where the first helicopter was waiting to load him and another victim headed to Kadlec.

“The second helicopter was hovering near the landing area while we loaded the first one,” Wilson Davis said. “There was probably five minutes between the two helicopters loading.”

Patterson estimates those four victims landed at Kadlec about a half hour later. The sixth victim was taken by ground ambulance to Memorial Hospital in Yakima, where he was treated and released.

Patterson said PUD personnel, who are trained in first aid, had attended to the injured before Davis Wilson and he arrived, moving them to an area away from the explosion area.

According to PUD Publicist Chuck Allen, the explosion occurred in one of the generator turbine areas.

The explosion was big enough to injure six people seriously, Allen said, but it did not disrupt operation of the dam. Allen did not know Friday which electrical equipment malfunctioned and had no way of describing the explosion.

Pattterson was told: “It was big enough to blow clothing and hard hats off of people.”

Patterson, the incident commander, said all of the victims had been moved to or near a locker room area. Two were in the showers when he and Davis Wilson arrived.

Davis Wilson turned water on those two victims to keep their bodies moist. There were plenty sounds of agony, she said.

Yet one of the injured men, who eventually ended up at Haborview, helped his fellow victims, then started helping emergency personnel. He aided Davis Wilson in moving a gurney into an elevator and to the locker area. He helped round up chairs.

When Davis Wilson noticed a burn on one of his arms, she told him he needed help. He pulled up his shirt and he was burned around the mid-section.

“You need to stop helping and be seen,” Davis Wilson practically ordered.

He stopped, and he was seen. He is one of the three victims who was listed as satisfactory on Friday.

Patterson said emergency personnel were able to leave about 2.5 hours after arriving – after cleaning up. The firefighters among them also checked for any signs of fire or other dangers before leaving.

For Patterson, it was the end of a long day. He responded to an abdominal pain call at 2 a.m., he went to a garbage truck fire at 6 a.m.

At 10:30 Patterson attended to a patient transfer from the Wahluke Medical Clinic to Kadlec. Then 4:30,, and the explosion at Priest Rapids Dam, rolled around.

And still Patterson made sure to laud all of his volunteers and other attending emergency personnel. He was proud of their efforts. He said everyone of them knew what he or she was doing.

“It went really smooth,” Patterson said. “The nurses on the plane and helicopters are top of the line. Those units are like ICUs, and they can do amazing things in there.”

According to Stredwick, inspectors from the Washington Department of Labor and Industries were on site last week to begin what will likely be weeks of investigation into the cause of the electrical equipment failure.

The equipment failure was isolated to one of ten generating units at the dam. The main circuit breaker, which acts as an on-off switch for the generating unit, malfunctioned.

“The generating unit will not operate again until the investigation is finished,” Stredwick said.