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Plaza Explosion Timeline Raises Questions

Frank Morris
/
KCUR

The investigation into the blast and fire that rocked the Country Club Plaza and destroyed JJ’s Restaurant has entered a new phase.  

“The people stage has basically concluded,” said Kansas City Mayor Sly James. “We are now moving into that part of the investigation about what caused the explosion.”

We know what caused the gas leak: a crew laying fiber-optic cable accidently pushed the cable into a two-inch gas main just before five o’clock Tuesday evening. A lot of attention will focus on what happened between then and 6:04, when JJ’s blew up.

“Pumper 19 returned to service”

The cable crew, part of Heartland Midwest, called the fire department, which mounted an emergency response, and got a truck, Pumper 19, to the restaurant 10 minutes later. Missouri Gas Energy’s first emergency responder got there at 5:16, but then something hard to explain happened.

“At 5:17 Pumper 19 returned to service,” says Kansas City Fire Chief Paul Berardi.   “They returned to service, they were available for service.”

Mayor James says the gas company would have jurisdiction in this kind of situation. MGE quickly brought a backhoe in and tried to open up the street over where they thought the main was broken, the idea being to vent and dilute the gas. Ultimately, someone from MGE did give the order to evacuate the restaurant, but several workers were inside the building when it blew up at 6:04, killing one and injuring at least 15 people.

James cautions not to assign blame for the disaster too early.   The facts will come out, he says, but not necessarily any time soon.

Find more coverage of the Plaza fire from KCUR here.

I’ve been at KCUR almost 30 years, working partly for NPR and splitting my time between local and national reporting. I work to bring extra attention to people in the Midwest, my home state of Kansas and of course Kansas City. What I love about this job is having a license to talk to interesting people and then crafting radio stories around their voices. It’s a big responsibility to uphold the truth of those stories while condensing them for lots of other people listening to the radio, and I take it seriously. Email me at frank@kcur.org or find me on Twitter @FrankNewsman.
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