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Rebuilding After the Blast: The day disaster struck

Posted at 3:26 PM, Mar 05, 2019
and last updated 2019-03-05 17:26:00-05

Part 2 of a 4-part series

At ground zero, just before the blast, one survivor, the Legion Hall Manager, actually tried to sound a warning.

Tom Jones had driven his vehicle down the alleyway when he smelled the odor of gas.

According to Len Albright of the American Legion, Jones “went downstairs and dialed 9, 1 — and as soon as he was ready to hit 1 again, kaboom!”

“We were about to order food with a friend of mine and all of a sudden it just exploded, and it shook for two seconds, and the lights went out,” said former KBZK Reporter Karen Matsumoto.

Rocking R Owner Mike Hope had a different reaction: “Oh my God, what happened?”

Former County Commissioner Steve White said no one could comprehend the level of destruction. Former Bozeman Police Captain Mark LaChapelle added that “initially they didn’t know the location.”

That was because people all over town called to say it had happened in their neighborhood.

“Literally you could feel it under your feet,” said Indulgence owner Deidre Quinn.

When people started to see the destruction, it was overwhelming.

“And I remember when we turned left on Main Street. I remember it like it was yesterday,” Mike Hope said. “And it was surreal to be honest with you.”

Graver Johnson with the Bozeman Fire Department agreed — “Really, umm, surreal,” he said — as did Deidre Quinn, who described the scene as “bizarre” and “apocolyptic”.

“Debris was in the air, it was falling down,” Johnson said.

Bozeman City Commissioner Jeff Krauss said the blast wave “bounced down the street and blew out the windows on opposite sides of the street as it bounced.”

“Glass was all over in the roadway,” Johnson said.

“There was something that looked like a, the world’s largest acetylene torch, just blowing blue flame out of this big pipe,” added Krauss.

Back in the Legion Hall, Tom Jones just wanted to escape.

“Crawled up the stairs. Got outside and a fireman was running down the street towards him, still putting his jacket on and he said, ‘Are you all right?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Get on over to the fire station’,” Len Albright said.

There were other close calls. The owner of Carter’s had just gone inside after shoveling snow. The Rocking R’s bookkeeper went to the owner’s other business that morning.

“Everyone was kind of dazed because nobody really knew what was going on,” said Johnson.

“It was definitely frightening, especially when you don’t know what’s caused it quite yet,” said KBZK News Anchor Donna Kelley.

Hawthorne Elementary was evacuated. Children and staff were taken to the public library.

“I, I think the first thought was to make sure everybody was ok,” said Hope.

Added Johnson: “We didn’t know who, how many were injured, what was going on.”

Jeff Krauss: “We were so worried, how many people we couldn’t get in touch with.”

Steve White: “It was the time of day when there are a lot of deliveries going on in the alleys.”

LaChapelle recalled expecting multiple injuries and fatalities — but the cold, snowy morning became a life saver.

“I talked to numerous people that were like, ‘Yeah, I was 15 minutes late, I was 30 minutes late’,” said Chris Naumann with the Downtown Bozeman Partnership.

Timing was everything.

“It could have occurred at noon. It could have occurred at five o’clock in the evening.  It could have been much, much worse,” Steve White said.

Initially about 15 people were unaccounted for. Eventually all were found safe. Except for one. Tara Bowman. She was killed in the explosion.

In Part 3: Memories of Tara Bowman


Part 1 –

BOZEMAN, Mont. – Tuesday will mark the 10th anniversary of the worst disaster to strike downtown Bozeman.

A gas explosion rocked the 200 block, killing one woman, flattening three buildings and rendering four others unsafe.  The calamity came with no warning.

“I was getting ready to go to work,” said Len Albright of the American Legion Post.

“That morning was just an ordinary morning for us,” said Steve White. White was chairman of the Gallatin County Commission. “We were getting ready to start an office meeting.”

Lots of meetings were about to get underway.

“We had a crew that was working out of our Three Forks shop, and I was out there for a safety meeting that morning,” said Pat Patterson with NorthWestern Energy.

“I’m driving into work, actually, with the city manager,” said Bozeman Assistant City Manager Chuck Winn.

Kids, like Chris Naumann’s young son, were heading to school. “Got him out the door and he was walking down the street to Irving,” said Naumann.

It was a day kids could love.

“It was a very snowy day that day,” said former mayor Jeff Krauss.

“I was out shoveling snow,” said Bozeman Fire Department’s Graver Johnson.

“Everybody had a slow start that day,” said Krauss.

A slow start that in time would prove to be life-saving.

“In the Law and Justice Center we felt the blast, as many people did around Bozeman,” said former Bozeman Police Captain Mark Lachapelle.

Even after the blast, most people were struggling to comprehend what was happening.

Albright said he saw a plume of smoke as he was coming over the hill near Bozeman Deconess Hospital ans was trying to get his bearings.

“Hmmm,” Albright remembers thinking, “that looks like it might be downtown.”

Just west of the blast, White had an incredibly unique vantage point.

“I just happened to be looking straight out the windows just at the time of the explosion,” he said. White didn’t know what he was seeing.

“I thought that it was maybe something with a propane tank at the new parking lot that they were building,” White said.

Over at the Fire Station on 19th, Johnson was also confused. “It didn’t come over our radios or our pagers,” he said.

A fire captain downtown heard the blast and made a phone call to the station, “and said ‘hey, we have some type of blast, you want to start heading this way,’” said Johnson.

Johnson and his crew were heading to Bozeman’s biggest disaster ever with little information and no idea of what was ahead.

“I remember turning on Main Street and heading down,” said Johnson. It was then that he began to understand what was going on.

“The smoke rising and everything, and that’s when we were trying to put it all together,” Johnson said.

Just then, life had changed forever in Downtown Bozeman.

In Part Two, we learn what people saw, heard and experienced in the minutes and hours after that huge explosion ripped through the heart of Bozeman’s downtown.