![]() ![]() The 12-story grain-storage facility-a longtime fixture on Burlington’s riverfront-was wrapped in orange flames.Īlison started shouting out assignments. Alison and his colleagues ducked under their desks, and a few looked out to see a plume of black smoke blocking the sky. Then the windows of the newsroom blew out. From the front door of the office, he saw the train tracks outside ripple, and the air seemed to vibrate and sway. He was 32 years old, and it was his first day as the city editor of The Hawk Eye, a newspaper in Burlington, Iowa. My mother, doing yard work at home, assumed that the nearby ammunition plant was testing a new explosive.ĭale Alison saw the blast up close. He ran outside, thinking that a car had smashed into the building. My father was testing a clay sample in a lab two miles away when suddenly the dial jumped. T he grain elevator exploded on a cool April morning in 1987, six years before I was born. ![]()
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