Nicked gas line cause of fire that burned servicemen

SAN DIEGO — An armored amphibious vehicle stuck in a rut along a Camp Pendleton road nicked a hidden gas line during a September exercise, engulfing 14 Marines and a sailor in a fireball that grew into a 20-foot pillar of flames, according to an official report released yesterday.

While its driver tried to extricate the assault amphibious vehicle — nicknamed an “amtrack” in the Marines — from a ditch, a backfiring engine sparked the gas detonation on the morning of Sept. 13 along Range 301 Road near the Bravo 3 “combat town” training site, 1st Marine Division investigators concluded.

“They attempted to get unstuck several times and then I heard a pop sound and then it exploded,” wrote an unnamed Marine in the report.

Thirteen Marines and a Navy corpsman were burned.

“Many of the facial and hand injuries might have been lessened if Marines had been wearing flame retardant clothing on those affected areas,” wrote Maj. Gen. Eric M. Smith, the commander of 1st Marine Division. He noted, however, the amtrack crew wore their special protective equipment and still suffered burns.

Temperatures were so high that the gas pipe welded to the vehicle’s steel tread and melted weapons. Along with the stream of natural gas, about 170 gallons of diesel fuel also fed the fire.

One of the unidentified witnesses recalled seeing a Marine with “very bad burns to his upper body which was exposed through his tattered blouse ... the other was on his knees looking at his hands. Both were conscious and screaming.”

The blaze wasn’t extinguished until more than six hours later, after workers closed off the gas line.

The report revealed officials planning the exercise did not know that a Marine D8T bulldozer three months earlier had ruptured the same line about 90 feet north of the Sept. 13 accident.