‘All I could do was hose them down’
ROBERT Neil was enjoying a day off with a trip to the dump.
It was a typically warm Cairns winter afternoon and he was sporting a singlet, shorts and a pair of thongs.
Just after 3pm he was heading east on Spence St and spotted fire shooting into the sky.
The firefighter quickly sprang into action.
He sped towards the scene but hit a literal roadblock when two police officers took one look at his outfit and questioned his credentials.
Eventually they let him pass and he arrived on scene about 3.30pm to find three of his colleagues with serious burns.
He used a hose to spray the men down before paramedics arrived to help them.
The experienced station officer, who had already been in the job for a decade, still counts it as “the biggest incident I ever attended”.
He has since worked to understand exactly what happened that day.
The rail car was filled with 21.95 tonnes, or 43,621 litres, of propane gas when the liquid hose connected to it fractured about 3.20pm on August 17, 1987.
A huge vapour cloud appeared and was ignited by the pilot light from a house some 45m away.
Gas Corporation staff tried to use the water deluge system but the heat was too intense.
Firefighters were there by 3.26pm and they directed two hoses towards the growing blaze.
It was just five minutes later that the giant metal tanker tore itself apart.
One half flew across Bunda St and landed 109m away, the other smashed through the roof and side wall of a warehouse and came to rest some 194m away in Dutton St.
“From the damage it did and the way those guys (firefighters) were burnt, I count myself lucky not to have been on that day,” Mr Neil said.
“All I was doing was standing at the back of those guys hosing them.
“Someone ended up getting some ice from the pub and we were using that to help them.
“I did what I had to do and what would have been expected of me.”
The damage bill reached $7 million, and the paint literally melted off the wall at the National Hotel next-door, now the Cape York Hotel.