PAINFUL MEMORY
30 years since CBD gas explosion hell
IT was described as being like Hiroshima. A giant explosion and fireball at the Bunda St depot was felt as far away as Innisfail. It killed one and injured 27. Eerily, sole victim Frank Schiller, (below) was photographed being comforted moments after the blast, his skin hanging from his body in ”sheets”. Today witnesses and his goddaughter relive the day that rocked a region.
FRANK Schiller’s skin hung from his body in “sheets”.
Sitting on a step outside a Bunda St building, he stares at his burned hands as a second man huddles behind with his arms wrapped around him in support.
It is this enduring and heartbreaking image which tells the tragic tale of a moment in time 30 years ago today when Cairns was shaken to its core.
Gas poured from a rupture in a tank at a Bunda St depot and was ignited by a nearby flame, sending a huge fireball soaring into the sky and surrounding streets.
Some described the August 17, 1987 explosion as being like “Hiroshima” as it left a trail of destruction in its wake, killing one and injuring 27 others – including firefighters doing their best to control the column of flames which followed the blast.
It could be felt as far away as Innisfail.
Mr Schiller, a kind Hungarian man who lived in a boarding house beside the National Hotel – now known as the Cape York Hotel – would be the only confirmed fatality.
With burns to 80 per cent of his body, medical staff could not even risk flying him to the Royal Brisbane Hospital’s specialist burns unit because he would not have survived the altitude. He died in Cairns Hospital two days later.
Photographer John Miner, who ran from his home in nearby Scott St to snap the tragic picture despite fears of a second explosion, said he knew immediately the 71-year-old was in trouble.
“My memory of him was he just had sheets of skin hanging off his arms which is the memory that stays with me to this day,” he recalled. “I asked him if I could take his photograph and he said “yes”.
“I very much didn’t think he was going to survive.”
His goddaughter, Cairns woman Sylvia Aquilina, will never forget what unfolded after she learned of his injuries and rushed to the hospital.
“I’d never seen a burns victim before,” she said. “His head was the size of a basketball and the bed was all wet because they couldn’t keep fluids in him. I had to go to work afterwards and I couldn’t get out of the car. I was just crying.”
Two firefighters – Steven Reynolds and Mal Armstrong – along with a third man David Shailer were seriously injured and flown to Brisbane for treatment.
Eleven other men, many of them nearby residents, were treated in Cairns Hospital.
The cost of the blast was estimated to be up to $7 million, halted the use of reticulated gas in the city and prompted a raft of changes for firefighters including uniform materials.