On This Day – February 13th

On Friday the 13th February 1981, a series of powerful underground explosions shook downtown Louisville, KY USA.

Cars were sent flying through the air, parts of buildings collapsed, streets buckled inward, manhole covers popped off with deadly velocity. Many people's bathrooms exploded into fountains of sewage.

Pedestrians were terrified that an earthquake was taking place. Still others believed it was the end of the world, as a sulphurous sewage stench filled the air all over town. Raw sewage began to fill some streets, three feet high and rising.

The explosions destroyed more than 13 miles (21 km) of sewer lines and streets in the centre of the city. Manhole covers shot up into the sky and came crashing down with great destructive force. One manhole cover crashed completely through the ceiling and floor of a third-floor apartment on Second street, and another narrowly missed a child when it landed in a house at the corner of 9th and Hill streets. The streets under which the sewer lines ran were destroyed – completely fragmenting some streets and leaving large holes in others as much as 38 feet (12 m) deep, exposing raw sewage pits where the sewers had been. In some places, sections of pavement were left standing on end near the gaping holes. Water lines and gas lines were severed, leaving area residents without service for weeks. The chimneys of 43 buildings fell and some stairways collapsed.

Luckily the explosions took place in the early hours when the streets were largely empty. Four people were injured, none seriously; there were no fatalities.

It was determined that the reason Louisville's sewer lines had exploded was because someone had been dumping massive amounts of Hexane, a colourless and virtually odourless liquid solvent, also used in Petrol, into the public sewers. That someone turned out to be the Floyd Street Ralston-Purina plant southeast of U of L's campus, which was using Hexane to remove oil from soybeans – in itself is a frightening concept, never mind its being disposed of into public sewers.

Although battered by an onslaught of lawsuits holding them responsible for millions of dollars' worth of damage, Ralston-Purina paid up and continued to operate the plant until the Autumn of 1984 when it sold the Floyd Street plant to Purdue Chicken Inc. After that, other Ralston-Purina plants in the area began to be sold off until 1997 when they were all gone, and Ralston-Purina no longer had a Jefferson County presence.

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