Wednesday, October 15, 1952

 

Wisconsin Du Pont Munitions Plant Blows Up

 

Eight Missing As Two Explosions Level Buildings

 

Blast Breaks Windows Seven Miles Away;

Refuse Newsman Entry

 

Barksdale, Wis. – (U.P.) – Two explosions rocked a Du Pont explosives plant here earlier today and the plant manager said eight men were “unaccounted for”.

 

No bodies had been found and no deaths had been officially recorded.

 

B.A. Semb said eight employees were missing and that he feared for their lives.  He did not reveal their names.

The first explosion smashed a building housing nitromex producing equipment at 2:50 a.m. CST.

 

A raging fire immediately followed the explosion.  The heat was so intense that firefighters had difficulties approaching the flames.

 

Sheriff Joseph H. Demars said that “I understand that six men were right in the building.”  He said that the plant gates were barred and that he could not enter to investigate the mishap.

 

A second blast shook the chemical plant a few hours later Semb said.

 

The first shock was so severe that it shattered about two thirds of the windows on the main street of nearby Ashland, Wis., residents said.

 

Ashland is about seven miles across Chequamegon Bay in Lake Superior from Barksdale.

 

Semb said that about 50 men were on duty in the Du Pont plant, which produces commercial explosives.  However, he added that most of them were probably at work in buildings other then the nitromex division. 

 

Newsmen were barred from the plant.  The company was fighting the fire with its own fire department.

Semb estimated the damage to the plant to be about $75,000.

 

The Plant employs a total of about 300 workers but only the night shift was on duty at the time of the blast. 

The last explosion at the Barksdale works occurred in the 1920’s and killed two men.

 

A night nurse at the Washburn Hospital said that no casualties were brought to the hospital and she had heard that six or eight men were killed.  She said that any survivors would have been brought to the Washburn Hospital.

 

Charles Sheridan, a photographer from Washburn, said the nitromex unit was composed of two large buildings and several smaller structures.

 

The other units were spread out in rolling, wooded country for safety.

 

The plant is a branch of the E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Company.

 

Sheridan said that the only known witness outside the gates was a navy man only identified as Smith from Ashland.

 

Smith was driving just outside the plant when the blast occurred with such force it nearly turned his car over, Sheridan said.

The main force of the blast outside the gates was felt in Ashland.  The unit was located in a ravine opening on the bay and channeled directly toward the town. 

 

The sheriff said that at least one large store widow was broken in Washburn, Wis. which is about five miles from Barksdale.

Ed Erickson, who runs a LST cargo ship hauling timber on the bay, said he was “shaken out of my bunk by the blast.”  The LST was docked in Ashland.

 

Bayfront streets in Ashland were lined with spectators and storekeepers 30 minutes after the explosion.  Second street was covered with glass from store front windows, and the store owners were busy sweeping up their merchandise and boarding up the windows.

 

The only window broken in Washburn, up the bayline from Barksdale, was in the Post Office.

 

The fire burned furiously for about two hours, Sheridan said, until a second smaller explosion snuffed it out.

 

He said the plant in its entirety covered about one square mile, all fenced and heavily guarded.

 

Nitromex is a commercial explosive used in mining iron ore in the Minnesota and Michigan iron ranges.