Thursday marked 25 years since the deadly DeBruce Grain elevator, the largest in the world at the time, exploded. For Wichita Fire Department Battalion Chief Chad Winton, a veteran with 27 years of experience, he remembers responding to the scene as if it were yesterday.
Just before the accident, Winton was two years into his career. He had just tried out for the rescue team and was one of three candidates who were accepted. Little did the then-rookie know just days later, everything he had learned up to that point would be put to the ultimate test. “[I] started getting buckets to move grain, shovels, lumber, cutting lumber, just stuff to shore up holes and keep grain in place so we could start tunneling and trenching in to get to those victims that we thought were still at the bottom of that elevator,” Winton said.
Winton says the teams worked in 12-hour shifts with the help of several county, state, and out-of-state agencies. “We had no firm count of how many were missing, so [there] was a little bit of confusion there and how many were actually working, and how many got out on their own,” Winton said. “They were still trying to get a head count … it all happened really quick.” Tragically, it soon became apparent any hope of finding additional survivors was gone.
Source: KSN-TV