[1970 - Mohave County pop.: 25,857 ; Kingman pop.: 7,312; Lake Havasu City pop.: 4,111 (founded in 1963 and then incorporated in 1978).]

June 30: Mohave General Hospital (MGH) was moved to new facilities with 83 acute-care beds at 3269 Stockton Hill Road, about 3-3/4 miles northeast of the old facility. Dr. Earl Wade was chief of staff. [(The Mohave County Sheriff's office would move into the old building on Beale Street by the mid-1970s.)

By this time nearly all segments of original Route 66 had been replaced by a modern four-lane highway. A group of local businessmen were striving to have the proposed new Interstate Highway 40 built through Kingman. The original route was scheduled for construction several miles south of town, missing it altogether and drastically reducing the number of stopover travelers which were so vital to this community. The reasons for bypassing Kingman were met and dispatched with until the primary reason came up: the high price of real estate through town. As J. Leonard and Grace Neal, prominent area ranchers (see also 1933), still owned land in Clack's Canyon just northwest of town, Leonard offered to donate whatever was needed for I-40 to be put through. His offer was accepted, the proposed route was changed, and I-40 with its heavy trucking and tourist traffic would eventually snake through Kingman.]

1971 - The new facility was approved for accreditation by the Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation (est. 1951), such status the hospital has maintained since through the Joint Commission on Accreditation for Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO, name changed in 1987). By asking for accreditation, an organization agrees to be measured against national standards set by health care professionals. An accredited organization substantially complies with these standards and continuously makes efforts to improve the care and services it provides.

[This year Mohave Community College was founded on 160 acres just north of Kingman. The land was donated by the Neals when they were approached by Dr. Walter Brazie, chairman of the first board of governors, who originally had hoped to purchase only ten acres for the building site. Dr. Brazie also offered to fence the property, but it was soon apparent that this willing and gracious gentleman knew more about doctoring than about fencing. Leonard's cowboys installed the ranch-style barbed wire fence which would keep the Neal cattle off campus for the first nineteen years. Grace would serve as the Mohave Community College Foundation's president in the early 1990s. (see also 1933)]

1972 - Dr. John J. Standifer of Kingman was elected president of the Arizona Medical Association. (He had arrived at MGH in 1959 and his practice here would last twenty-two years. He would then move to Maricopa County, take a residency in psychiatry and practice that specialty beginning in 1985.)

[October: Kingman purchased the Long Mountain Water Company from the Neals to supply the needs of the growing population on the north side of town, including the New Kingman Addition, known unofficially as the "Butler" area. At the time one thousand customers were already being served by the wells, the first of which had been drilled in 1958. Also in 1972, the Neals gave 160 acres about six miles north of the city limits and just off the west side of U.S. Route 66 to Kingman for the development of a new sewer when the ciy agreed to invest in the pipe necessary for the job.]

1973 - July 5: (The previous day the Kingman Fire Department had staged the traditional Fourth of July fireworks display without problem at the county fairgrounds.)

Tank car #38214 had arrived in town one month earlier and was shuttled onto a spur that the Williams Energy Company leased from the Santa Fe Railroad. There the car sat in the sun. The car carried 33,000 gallons of propane gas which was to be transferred to storage tanks 75 yards away. This was at the Doxol Gas Western Energy Co. bulk plant (2512 East Highway 66), in the Hilltop business district on Kingman's southeast side.

At approximately 1:30 p.m., July 5, Marvin Mast and Donald Formantini, employees of the Williams Energy Company, began opening the tank car's valves to transfer its load into smaller storage tanks in the company yard. [It is said that the outside temperature at 105 F "was something like twenty degrees above safe handling temperatures the day they decided to empty the car, and someone said they were using steel or aluminum tools when they should have been using brass. Brass won't spark and start a fire.] A leak was detected in one of the fittings and an attempt was made to correct it by striking the fitting with a large wrench. The gas ignited and turned the tank car into a huge blowtorch enveloping the two men. Flames shot 70 to 80 feet in the air in a V-shape. The two men jumped or fell off the car. Formantini then stumbled across the street perhaps a quarter mile to the Highway Patrol office and stated his co-worker was still at the burning car. At 1:51 p.m., a ten-man squad of the 75-man Kingman Volunteer Fire Department responded to the alarm and began spraying the car with water, hoping to keep the tank car cool and to prevent a pressure buildup inside it. Water won't extinguish burning propane, but the Kingman FD had no equipment which would, so all it could do was try to prevent an explosion. Sounding like the thunderous roar of a jet airliner taking off, the tank car quieted for a second, sucked that huge column of flames down into it, swelled up and popped like a giant champagne cork. Rescuers retrieved the second worker - Marvin Mast - who repeatedly warned of the imminent danger. Two more times the flames vanished into the car and popped out. By this time one of the large transfer hoses was sending burning propane against the side of the tank car.

While the firemen worked, approximately 300 spectators congregated along Route 66, the main "drag" which connected I-40 on the north and south sides of town. The road was separated from the burning tank car by nothing but less than two hundred yards of open desert. Kingman police and Arizona Highway patrolmen were establishing roadblocks 1,000 feet from the fire and, two minutes before two o'clock just as an order to move people farther back was given, the tank car exploded. With the nearest fire hydrant twelve hundred feet away, the firemen were preparing to lay down a second water hose at the time. (In those days this was standard procedure which everyone was trained to do. The tank car exploded before the heavy hose stream could be put on it to keep it cooled below the 900 degree exploding point.)

From Mohave County Miner, August 2, 1973, pg. 1 with the caption "THE RAILROAD tank car loaded with propane spouting tongues of flames and the instant of the resulting explosion [also shown below as bottom photo of The Arizona Highway Patrolman cover] in Kingman on July 5 were recorded graphically by an amateur photographer, Henry James Graham, 30, a brakeman for the Santa Fe Railroad. Graham was aboard a train headed east at the time of the explosion and took about 40 color photographs of the fire, explosion and the aftermath of the tragic event. The tank car spouts flames only moments before the explosion which injured more than 100 persons and has left 12 persons dead." Underneath the explosion photo is the caption: "THE MINER purchased the color transparencies for reproduction and the staff believes that it is the first time that color photographs of the fire and explosion have appeared in the print media. The considerable time and investment in reproducing the photographs this week are part of the continuing graphic coverage this newspaper has attempted to give to the fire and explosion. In the instant of the explosion the tank car was hurled into the air and a railroad tie [vertical dark line above explosion] is shown being blown high above the ball of fire. Seconds later the ball engulfed the fire trucks and cars." The above photo has been cropped by RJB to show approximately the same width and foreground as the explosion photograph below.

The top photo of The Arizona Highway Patrolman cover had been snapped by a different photographer looking from the left of and at about the same time as the above scene.

One of the special valves designed to blow off pressure in event of fire apparently malfunctioned. The resulting explosion created a two-acre fireball -- roughly 85,000 square feet - going from low to the ground up to 200 feet high and one thousand feet in diameter with temperatures of 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit at its center and 1,800 degrees at its edges (according to expert testimony at the coroner's inquest later). The fireball itself only lasted for a second or two before turning into a slightly smaller mushroom cloud several hundred feet high. This could be seen for miles. Flaming propane sprayed by the explosion and then falling debris from this cloud ignited several buildings in the vicinity. Three people died instantly, six other victims died from their burns during the next five days and three more succumbed within two weeks. Over a hundred other persons suffered burns. Carroll Brown (Kingman's police chief between 1972 and 1996, who at the time was coming from downtown in response to a burglary alarm at Valley National Bank -- now Stockman's Bank -- which had just been set off by the initial fire a short distance away at the Doxol plant) said, 'Our study determined that there was a zone with a perimeter one hundred yards from the tank car that was the kill zone. Four men in that zone lived - the sheltered ones [who nevertheless suffered serious burns]… The rest died.'

Two workers as far away as at the bank received flash burns; the shrubbery around the Highway Patrol office (which was by now ordered evacuated) was singed.

The scene of the fire was highly visible to most of the town's residents. A radio station's news flash and the fire department's siren probably drew more spectators to the scene than would have otherwise come to see out of mere curiosity.

Mohave County Sheriff's Office, Department of Public Safety, and Arizona Game and Fish personnel were joined by private citizens in sealing off the fire area and rerouting the massive traffic - including the cross-country Highway 66 -- away from it. The fact that the fire scene was bordered on all sides by vacant fields further impeded control.

The MGH Emergency Room personnel were alerted shortly after 2:00 pm that two burn patients were on the way to the hospital via ambulance. Within moments after those victims arrived, the ER doors opened to a flood of second and third-degree burns. A disaster alert sounded at Mohave General Hospital, which was slightly over half full that day.

(Ironically or fortunately, MGH had conducted a drill during National Hospital Week six weeks earlier. Most of the public service agencies participated in the mock disaster, and all felt that the experience added to their ability to respond to an actual disaster if one should occur.)

MGH received 107 casualties from the explosion by way of the one ambulance, private cars, police cars, and anything else available. Security at the hospital was to have been provided by outside personnel also -- but many of these were themselves being treated for injuries or worse. Spectators and visitors gathered both outside the emergency department and inside the treatment area. (There was an executive decision made to let the loved ones be there inside with the patients.) A spontaneous announcement by a local radio DJ for "all people with any medical training" to go to the hospital added to the confusion as well-meaning but unauthorized individuals clogged the MGH hallways. The request basically assumed that the hospital did not have its own workable disaster plan.

The telephone system at MGH proved to be woefully inadequate for the demands of an emergency. The jammed switchboard then completely lost service as a side effect of the explosion. No alternative notification procedures were in place at the time. Furthermore, the disaster site was so close to the hospital that even if the staff had been properly alerted there was little time for preparation.

All available ice in town was requested for use in treating burn victims. The injured were treated in the emergency room and in the halls of the hospital, while the severely burned persons were treated and packed with ice at the exterior boarding ramp of the emergency room evacuation. Four aircraft from Air Evac of Phoenix left Sky Harbor Airport between 3:01 and 3:52 pm after receiving the call from MGH "Send us everything you've got!" at 2:30 pm. No estimation of the number of victims was available. Two helicopters each were supplied by Luke and Nellis Air Force bases. Twenty-six of the injured were then evacuated to burn centers in Phoenix, Henderson, NV and Las Vegas, the last ones evacuated by 6:30 pm. Thirty injured were retained as inpatients at MGH, with the remainder being treated as outpatients.

As the wife of Kingman Police Department Lieutenant G. L. Jennings later recounted, "The hospital was an unbelievable sight. Roadblocks, people everywhere and a large helicopter parked in front. I saw two stretchers with burn victims piled high with ice being loaded aboard. The police chief's wife met me at the front door. She was not only a Pink Lady [a hospital volunteer], there to help, but a close friend, there to take me to my husband's side. People, so many people. The corridors were full. Burn victims, families, doctors, nurses. It was like a scene from a war zone movie and suddenly I was hit by an overpowering urge to cry out, 'Please, God, let me wake up, let us all wake up from this unreal dream.' Officer Jennings had been one of the survivors who were approximately only sixty yards from the center of the explosion, and he came back home after a month's stay at Phoenix's Good Samaritan Hospital. He then reported to MGH daily for at least a month for treatment and supervised exercise. (He and his family had returned to Arizona that April after an absence of more than ten years.)

Five out of seven of Lake Havasu City's doctors and a dozen nurses and other personnel were flown in five craft to Kingman Airfield when the call for medical personnel went out over radio KFWJ. They were then taken by helicopter to the hospital. They brought with them Lake Havasu Community Hospital's entire supply of whole blood for the burn patients. "When we got to Kingman General Hospital, things were going very efficiently. …the staff of Mohave General had everything under control. The severe cases had already been flown to Las Vegas and to Phoenix. The slightly burned had been treated and the Havasu doctors' main work was debridement - removing the burned tissue - and treating and dressing. We arrived at 4 and left at 7 p.m., very impressed with the fine organization we found."

"Things went pretty well," a hospital spokesman said. "The biggest delay was in air evacuation helicopters getting here," she said. "They had about an hour wait and everybody was out at the airport with their patients waiting for the helicopters." No heliport was available at MGH at the time, and the craft had to land and take off from the roadway. Also, the army helicopters that arrived needed more room in front of them before they could then take off. The hospital called in, as best it could, its reserve staff. "When the alarm went out most of the hospital people who weren't on duty came in." (Two babies were also delivered in the midst of all the confusion.)

Those who died because of the Kingman Explosion were:

William L. Casson, 52, volunteer fire captain (former fire chief), 27-year veteran fireman, regional manager for Citizens' Utilities Co., a director of the Kingman Chamber of Commerce, and a 31-year member of the Elks (d. instantly July 5);

Myron B. (Jimmy) Cox, 55, assistant fire chief, 22-year veteran fireman, driver for Kingman Bake Shop, a member of the city planning and zoning commission, piano player, and a long-time member of the Elks (d. instantly July 5);

Roger A. Hubka, 27, volunteer fireman, service manager for Double G Tire Co. (one of the companies that was totally destroyed), and a Pop Warner football coach (d. instantly July 5);

Joseph M. Chambers III, 37, 16-year veteran volunteer lieutenant fireman, employee of Doxol Gas Co., a member of the Elks, and one of the organizers of Kingman's original Jaycees chapter (d. July 6);

Marvin E. Mast, 42, manager of Doxol Gas Co., Korean War veteran, and member of a Moose Lodge in Illinois where he lived up to 1972, burned in initial explosion (d. July 6);

Arthur C. Stringer, 25, Vietnam veteran and member of the Arizona national Guard, volunteer fireman for one month (d. July 7) (his father, also a volunteer fireman, was seriously burned);

Christopher G. Sanders, 38, captain of Hualapai Fire Department, certified first aid instructor, and executive director of Mohave Big Brothers, had loaded others into an ambulance before evacuating himself from the scene and helped a newspaper reporter drive the vehicle to the hospital with victims burnt less severely then he (d. July 8);

Richard Lee Williams, 47, volunteer fireman and principal of Kingman High School since 1959, coach there 1949-1955, member of the Elks and American Legion and a Rotarian (d. July 8);

Frank S. (Butch) Henry, 28, 7-year volunteer fireman (but he had attended fires all his life with his father who retired after 30-years with KFD) and manager of ICX truck lines (d. July 10);

John O. Campbell, 41, volunteer fireman, head of the Kingman Water Department, assistant city works director, and a Little League manager (died July 16, on the eve of the opening of a Little League tournament);

Donald G. Webb, 38, volunteer fireman, gas station owner, Elks official and Rotarian (d. July 18);

Alan Hansen, 34, Arizona highway patrolman and a fireman, suffered burns over 50 percent of his body trying to help an unconscious fireman (d. July 19).

Ninety-nine others, most of them spectators who had gathered along the busy interstate Highway 66 only four hundred and fifty feet away from the tank car, were injured by the explosion. The fireball had also started other fires, including ignited butane tanks at the bulk plant. The fire was announced as being under control by 5:30 pm but the fear of new outbreaks and possible explosions continued all night. The following day gas company officials drained the tanks and spot fires continued to break out. Telephone calls from all over the U.S. and Canada sought information about residents, prompted by erroneous reports that Kingman had been destroyed. Highway 66 was reopened that morning as the announcements of deaths continued amid plans for the first funerals three days later. A full-scale investigation of the explosion was begun by state and federal officials.

Total material damage exceeded one million dollars. Three businesses were totally destroyed (Union 76 service station, Double G Tire, Kountry Kitchen) and a fourth -- the Phillips 66 truck stop where 66 Auto & Truck Sales now stands -- was over 50% ruined. Everything for three to four hundred feet from the tank car's location was black and charred. Six members of the 24-man police force were also among the injured. The disaster was of such magnitude in the small, closely knit community that city and county officials openly wept and Kingman Mayor Shannon Shaw ordered all flags flown at half-mast for a mourning period of 30 days.

Firemen from eight towns and cities around Arizona plus from Needles, CA helped keep the Kingman FD going, often with equipment from their own cities. And while conventional fire-fighting gear is fire resistant when new, repeated wetting reduces its effectiveness. For a routine structural fire, the equipment the volunteers had was satisfactory, but not in a fire such as happened here. Money to buy the modern gear ($130 per suit compared with $45 for conventional gear) had not been available in the volunteer department's limited budget. By the Monday after the explosion, 30 new applications for firefighter positions had been received.

Charles A. Potter, one of the burn victims, had worked for 26-1/2 years as a volunteer for the Kingman Fire Department, most recently as its chief. After the explosion, the city decided to upgrade several positions and Potter became a paid fire chief.

Four days after the disaster, a non-profit burn fund was set up. Some $137,892 was collected. Of that, $109,705 was distributed to burn victims and families. The remaining portion was used to establish a college trust fund for the 29 Kingman children whose fathers were killed by the blast.

The Kingman City Council met on July 6 in a special session to survey the damage, decide on the needs of the city, establish a mourning period, and review their ongoing requests to move bulk storage tanks outside city limits. (From the balcony of city hall alone on Beale Street could be seen five storage tanks bearing a company's name painted on the side -- Texaco, Shell, Union 76, Standard and Mobil.) The out-of-town company officials' representatives continually said that moving would be too costly. So the city council revised the fire code, and gave the storers until Sept. 13, 1974 to comply or to move out of town. The new ordinance had, in fact, come up a year earlier, but nothing was done. After the explosion, the fire code became an instant issue. Essentially, all the new ordinance did was require all bulk storage tanks to be diked and to have some kind of foam fire extinguisher system. The ones in town which moved were provided an area out by the airport. Spur tracks like the one the explosion happened on were to be sunk so that those cars would be in a pit. If they exploded then, the pit would force the blast upward so it wouldn't be able to do as much damage.

Ironically, a seminar had earlier been scheduled for Kingman on July 11 to discuss "dangerous cargo spillage." In consideration of the July 5 explosion, the seminar, by the State Highway Department in cooperation with the Arizona Corporation Commission, was postponed.

Gov. Jack Williams on July 19 declared the city of Kingman and Mohave County a disaster area and made available $50,000 for repair or replacement of police and fire gear.

On July 28 at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, a test was conducted with a tank car filled with propane gas. That car also blew apart before the experimental safety valve had a chance to work. Officials from the army's ballistic research laboratory, Alberdeen Proving Ground, MD, took part in this first of three scheduled experiments to collect data that officials hoped would lead to the development of safer railroad tank cars.

What made the explosion so devastatingly destructive was the involvement of a BLEVE (BLEH-vee). A Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion (BLEVE) releases a large mass of pressurized superheated liquid or liquified gas low to the ground. In addition, a substantial blast wave may occur along with the generation of debris as the tank is blown apart into two or more pieces. If the released liquid ignites, a fireball results. A BLEVE is the worst possible outcome when a tank holding a pressure liquefied gas, such as propane or LPG, fails along most of its length due to fire contact or impact. Although this phenomenon was known of before the Kingman Disaster, it wasn't until photographs of the Doxol accident and subsequent investigations and testing took place that BLEVEs were better understood. After several BLEVEs of this type in the 1960s and 70s, the railroad industry retrofit all tank cars carrying liquefied flammable gases by adding thermal protection, which protects against high temperatures that can weaken metal. Since these and other retrofits were completed in 1980, there have been no BLEVEs of tank cars in the United States. (BLEVEs can and do still occur with stationary propane tanks, tank trucks or pipe lines.)

Between 1950 and 1970, 18 incidents involving road and rail tanker fires resulted in lost lives due to sheer ignorance of dealing with BLEVE situations. Those 18 fires resulted in the deaths of two fire fighters and 20 civilians and serious injury to 318 firefighters and civilians. In the next five years beginning in 1970, there was sharp rise in casualty figure claiming lives of 18 fire fighters and causing serious burn injury to over 300 people. Remember: 12 of those fire fighters and 99 burn victims were just from the Kingman incident. (Subsequent research has shown that while approaching from the side nearly 90% of projectiles fall within 4 fireball radii of the BLEVE, the recommended safe distance is at least 15 fireball radii. The injured people along Highway 66 were only about 3 radii from the Kingman explosion. The Kingman explosion sent debris and flames up to 2,000 feet away with the three-ton end of the half-inch-thick metal tanker landing a quarter mile down the tracks. There was a crater 10 feet deep left where the tank car had been sitting. No rail tank car BLEVE before or since equaled the one in Kingman.)

In August 1973 a coroner's jury ruled that no criminal negligence was involved in the fire and explosion. No criminal charges were filed, but 16 civil suits were pending a year later.

Within a week of the disaster a living memorial had been planned at the park being built in the vicinity of the Junior High School.

The high school athletic field was renamed Lee Williams Field to honor the high school principal, a volunteer fireman who was one of the fatalities.

As a result of the Kingman disaster, standard procedures for handling a BLEVE now became well-known in fire departments throughout the country. Films and pictures taken at the disaster are part of the training course.

Also, the Mohave County fire departments pooled their money and put in a county emergency radio frequency to which all fire departments are now linked and they entered in to automatic mutual aid agreements.

The accident was the worst fire-fighting disaster in Arizona and among the top ten worst to have occurred in the U.S. up to Sept. 11, 2001.

The follow-up critique of the disaster led MGH to implement a number of important internal changes and modifications. These included having its own in-house security team.

1975 - Fall: There were 25 nurses on staff at MGH. The 27 people in the Housekeeping and Laundry Department were handling more than 25,000 pounds of laundry every month, and the Medical Records Department was preparing to start microfilming the materials on their bulging shelves. The hospital's Auxiliary, the "`Pink Ladies," donated more than 7,700 service hours this year.

Also, MGH had a booth at the county's first annual health fair. The position of social worker was added to the staff. Mrs. Bonnie Tomlin, the first one to hold this title, emphasized that her job was intended to prevent, if possible, additional hospitalization of the patient by instructing in proper care in the home once the patient has been discharged. And, Lou Deering, medical technologist at MGH since 1970 was named president of the Arizona Medical Laboratory Association.

1976 - March: MGH Administrator Donald J. Logue (1968-1986) chaired the 10-member Northern Arizona Hospital Council for the first time when the administrators met here. The group would meet quarterly to discuss problems common to the state's rural hospitals and assure the hospitals representation in meetings of the Arizona Hospital Association.

There were some 220 employees at MGH, including 16 full-time and six part-time RNs. The hospital was in the middle of a nursing shortage - its goal was 24 full-time RNs - and newspaper and journal advertising had been placed nationwide. Rural recruitment has always been difficult. Part-time nurses were being hired from three or four agencies in Phoenix, which marketplace was itself described at the time as "kind of slow." The story of the shortage appeared in The Arizona Republic and was picked up by the Associated Press. Calls came in from across the state and country. The shortage was, at least temporarily, reduced.

MGH's Dr. Jack Standifer and chief radiologist Dr. Earl Gilbert were participants in a film on the issue of malpractice insurance created by Phoenix physician Dr. Darrell Manley for the Arizona Academy of Pediatrics and the State Medical Association. The documentary analyzed the malpractice issue from a number of perspectives. MGH's physicians explored the effect of rising malpractice costs on health care in rural areas of the state.

1980 - [Mohave County pop.: 55,865 ; Kingman pop.: 9,257; Bullhead City pop.: 10,719; Lake Havasu City pop.: 15,909.]

August: Kingman Hospital, Inc. (KHI) was incorporated by 25 local citizens to explore ways to keep down health care costs and to remove the hospital from county control. Historically, any profits which were generated by the hospital -- a county facility -- could be and were used for other county needs. Equipment upgrades for MGH continued to fall behind. [U.S. Interstate 40 was opened through Kingman at this time.]

1982 - [Kingman celebrated its Centennial Year.] MGH began its Home Health department.

December 7: the issue of a hospital district was placed on the ballot, and by a 2 to 1 margin, Hospital District Number One of Mohave County was formed.