A Grim Anniversary

Berlin, NY after the propane truck explosion

I have been meaning to write this post for days.  It's been on my mind for a while.  Yet, when it comes down to putting the words down, I have pulled away every time.  I have found other things to do.  I decided it was too late and didn't want to end up dreaming about this at night.  Anything to keep from writing it.

This past Wednesday, July 25, my hometown marked a grim anniversary.  Fifty years ago, on Wednesday, July 25, 1962,  a propane tanker crashed coming down the mountain into town; turning Berlin into an inferno.  The incident was so horrific that people who experienced it still don't talk about it much.  At least not those who were right in the middle of it.  Even though it happened some 14 years before my birth, it has on more than one occasion been a source of nightmares for me.  I don't know how many nightmares were had by those who lived through it.  Anyone who has lived in Berlin for any period of time has heard about it at one point or another.  My mother was not quite 9 years old, she would celebrate her 9th birthday three weeks later.  People who were 'newcomers' to Berlin- as in, those who moved there after The Disaster, have asked my mother to talk about it.  What they don't understand is even after all this time, it is so painful for her to talk about.  When she does talk about it, I get chills.

There was a lot of talk this year because it was the 50th anniversary.  There was an article in the Albany paper, plus the local paper.  Mom was contacted by a reporter from the Albany paper who wanted to interview her.  My sister and I encouraged her to talk to him.  When you hear other people talk about it, you get a feel for what it was like.  But to hear a woman who was 8 years old at the time, it's chilling. I know.  I've already said that.  But it is.  The summer I was 8, I imagine my biggest concerns were how long we could play outside with our friends before bedtime.  How far we were allowed to ride our bikes.  I just cannot imagine being 8 and witnessing what my mother witnessed.  I was home when she talked with the reporter by phone.  She talked for nearly half an hour.  When the article came out, he used only two sentences of what she said.  I knew her story needed to be told.  I have asked for Mom's permission to share it, even though she doesn't read my blog.  She has given me her blessing.  This post is a compilation of what I have read in newspapers since the event, stories others have told me, and thanks to Ancestry.com, I have also been able to draw on newspaper articles from the time.  But mostly, it is Mom's memories.  My apologies if I get any of it wrong.  This will be long, so I hope the reader will bear with me.

The story starts with the truck.  The driver, out of Pennsylvania, was driving a load of propane to Bennington, Vermont.  He had never driven this route before.  It is believed that he either took a wrong turn in Poestenkill, or that he was given the wrong directions.  I don't know that they ever confirmed which it was.  The way he should have gone would still have taken him over a mountain, as there is no way to get from Albany to Bennington without crossing a mountain- but it would have been a less severe drop.  Coming over Plank Road (or the mountain, as locals call it) into Berlin means making a very steep 2 mile descent into the town.  You come down about 2/3 of the way down, which is the 'big hill'.  Then you round a bend and it levels off for a little bit, before you make another turn and come down the final approach into the center of Main Street.  It is, even today, a narrow, winding road.  As the driver came down the mountain his brakes failed.  (In the picture above, there is a curve in the upper left of the picture.  This is Plank Rd and this curve is about where the truck crashed) People in town talk of hearing an air horn.  As the driver came down the mountain with no brakes, he was on the horn trying to warn the people in the town.  People recall seeing him waving them out of the way.  

Mom has always described July 25, 1962 as a hot summer night.  People this year have compared the summer of 1962 to the summer of 2012:  hot and dry.  The water levels in the reservoirs and creeks were really low.  Mom had been visiting the neighbors who lived behind them.  She described them as another set of grandparents.  She was always at their house, visiting, or working on projects.  This Wednesday night, like so many other summer nights, Grandma called for her to come to dinner. "Kathleen Ann, time for supper!"  Mom went home from the neighbors' house to have supper with her family.  My Grandparents lived in a large Victorian house on Main Street (circled in yellow in the picture above), near the center of town.  They lived in the upstairs apartment, while a couple of Grandpa's elderly aunts lived in the main level apartment.  Mom said they had just sat down for supper when they heard the air horn of the truck.  She even remembers what they were having for supper.  She said it was a typical summer meal:  hamburgers, corn, tomatoes.  A couple of days earlier, one of Grandpa's friends, who was a contractor, had hit something coming off the mountain (and I forget what she said it was) and Grandpa had helped him get the truck out.  When they heard the horn, Grandpa said 'Not again, Jack!' and then they heard a boom.

My grandmother stepped outside to see what had happened.  When she came back in, her eyebrows and eyelashes were gone, her hair singed.  Mom said she has never forgotten the look of horror on Grandma's face when she came back inside.  At first, they didn't know what had happened.  The family went back outside.  My mother said everything was on fire.  Their neighbors, the ones that Mom had been visiting just a few minutes before, came through the yard on fire.  My grandparents helped extinguish them, then loaded them into Grandma's car.  Berlin was a busier town in 1962 than it is now.  They even had a town doctor.  Grandma drove the neighbors down to the doctor, which was maybe a block away. 

Grandma had a new car at the time.  As she got to the doctor, someone else came in with more injured people.  In all the chaos, the other person hit Grandma's car.  The other driver was apologizing profusely to Grandma.   Grandma told him not to worry, they might all be dead tomorrow.  While Grandma was helping the neighbors, Grandpa started trying to save the house.  He alternated between putting the hose on the house and the garage.  The house had a slate roof.  Mom said you could watch the fire hit the roof and just fizzle out.  I also remember her telling me that her father handed her the hose and told her to keep it on the house. 

There were several fires.  There was the initial explosion, where the truck crashed.  That happened in front of a house that had two apartments.  In that house, a young husband and wife were eating dinner with their 16 month old son.  The mother grabbed the baby and used her body to shield him.  She would die a couple days later.  The son lived, but has had extensive surgeries throughout his life as a result of his injuries.  After the initial explosion, there were secondary fires.  Mom said you stood there, watching fire balls fly across the sky and land on something, setting something else on fire. 

One of the buildings that burned was the First Baptist Church, on the corner of Main Street and Maple Ave.  In the picture above, you see a church in the lower right corner.  That is the Catholic Church.  Across Maple Ave (the road running to the left of the Catholic Church)  is where the Baptist Church set.  It was 162 years old when it burned.  Mom remembers the church having a very tall steeple.  She said she stood in her driveway and watched a fireball hit the top of the steeple.  The fire spiraled around the steeple down to the roof, then the steeple fell in on the alter and the whole church was gone almost instantly.  This picture is from Easter, 1961.  My mom is standing next to the car.  You can see the church in the background.  This would have been the similar viewpoint to what she had on that July night.

My grandparents were part of the Rescue Squad in town.  Actually, they were founding members of the Rescue Squad (which later became the ambulance).  The rescue squad was formed not long before The Disaster, if I remember correctly. Together with another couple, Grandma and Grandpa pooled their money and bought a used ambulance from a neighboring fire company for Berlin.  So as the neighborhood around them burned, my grandparents were doing what they would normally do- help others.

Grandpa left the house on Main Street to check on his parents.  In the aerial photo above, there is a blue star on the right side of the picture.  Slightly to the right of the blue star and out of the frame of this picture is the house that my Great-Grandparents lived in.  To the right a little further is the house that I grew up in. The red star in the photo represents where my Grandfather's brother, my Uncle Sid, lived with his family.  Uncle Sid's house was the first one in the neighborhood that didn't burn.  Although they had to put siding on the house afterwards because the wood siding would never hold paint again- it just blisters off due to the damage from the propane. 

Mom remembers that her Aunt Emily (Grandpa's sister) and her husband were visiting at the time.  Mom's grandmother, Mabel, had Rheumatoid Arthritis.  By 1962, she was 77 years old and confined to a wheelchair.  Mom said as the neighborhood burned, Uncle Ed (Aunt Emily's husband) drove his red VW Beetle to the door of her grandparents' house and loaded Mabel into the car.  Knowing he couldn't go back out the road because everything was on fire, he drove through the yard behind the Catholic Church.  She remembers that her grandparents had two large bushes at the edge of their property, bordering a sidewalk.  The little car just fit through the opening between the two bushes.

Reginald and Mabel Wager, 1959.

My great-grandmother was taken to Grandma & Grandpa's house.  She died overnight of a heart attack.  The doctor told my Grandfather that she had died of fear.  She saw the fires, and everyone else had the ability to get out on their own.  But since she was confined to a wheelchair, she had to rely on others. Communication in the town had been cut off due to the explosion.  When it was reported that there was a death at the residence of Lewis Wager (my grandfather), it was reported that the first casualty of the accident was Mrs. Lewis Wager (which would have been my grandmother).  This went out over the radio stations in the area.  Grandma's best friend lived on the other side of town, and she heard that Grandma had died. She made her way on foot across town, telling the police and firemen that she had to get to 'those girls' (my mom and her sister).  When she got to my Grandparents' house and Grandma opened the door,  the friend fainted.  When she came to, she told my grandma she had heard she was dead.  Grandma said yes, she knew they had reported that, but it was her mother-in-law that had died.  Grandma's sister, Vivian, was traveling in Canada with her family at the time.  She heard the news reports about this terrible Disaster in Berlin, NY; and then heard the same incorrect news- that the first person to die was Mrs. Lewis Wager.  They turned the car around and sped back to NY.  When they got to Berlin, they found the reports had been wrong.

Fire departments came from all over the county, as well as from neighboring Massachusetts and Vermont.  The firemen would think they had the fires out and another one would start.  The following day someone realized that the bus garage had been hit.  The bus garage was a half mile away from the crash area.  A fireball had jumped the area where my house was, and hit the school bus garage.  The town lost all their school buses.

Mom said it looked like a war zone.  The papers from the next morning showed a picture and said you might think it was Berlin, Germany after WWII, but no, it was Berlin, NY.  This part of town was cut off from the rest of civilization.  She said the state troopers arrived and blocked off the area with cement barricades.   Sightseers had come from miles around to see what was going on.  I read in one of the articles this week that people put up milk cans in town for donations.  They collected a total of $20,000 from people wanting to help.  Help was offered from near and far- even as far as Berlin, Ohio offered to help.

In 1962, Berlin not only had a doctor, but also a funeral home.  The funeral home was on the south end of town.  My great-grandmother's funeral was held there.  Mom remembers being all dressed up for the funeral, and then having to climb over concrete barriers to get to the funeral home.  She said they had to prove to the police who they were and where they were going, and why. 

All total, 10 people died, including my great-grandmother and the truck driver.  The members of the rescue squad who took the truck driver to the hospital said he begged for forgiveness the entire way to the hospital.  He left a wife and young family.  Most of the people who died didn't die instantly.  They died over the course of the next several days. 

The neighborhood that was destroyed became my neighborhood.  Most of the neighbors rebuilt in the same location.  When my parents married, they moved into the house next door to the house that had been mom's Grandparents.  My mother drives the Plank Road nearly every day.  She lives with the reminders daily.  In the summer growing up, there were days she couldn't stand the air.  I don't know of anyone who loves the fresh air flapping the curtains more than my mother.  But she has always said on a hot summer day, she can still smell the burning.  The burning of homes, and worse- the burning of flesh.

My mother has never cooked over a gas stove.  She has always had an electric stove.  Dad's mother always had a gas stove.  My mother would never cook on it.  If she was there and had to cook something, she made my father use the stove.  She has also never grilled.  Dad has had numerous propane gas grills.  She will buy them for him, and she loves to have a meal cooked on the grill.  But she won't go anywhere near it.   She remains terrified of fire. 

Good things came of The Disaster, too.  The accident investigation found that the crash did not cause the explosion.  The tanker was constructed poorly, with thinner metal as a cost savings measure.  As a result of The Disaster, federal officials strengthened regulations on carrying propane, including what the tank must be made of.  Fire departments learned how to handle a catastrophic event, and communication channels were greatly improved.   Fire departments are better able to communicate not only among themselves, but with other departments due to it.

Still, for those of us who grew up in Berlin after The Disaster, it remains the stuff of nightmares. And for our family, it remains very personal.  There was a lot of hoopla this week.  At 5:27pm Wednesday night, they sounded the siren in town to commemorate the exact moment of impact.  My sister had mom stay at her house later than usual.  We didn't want mom on the road, that same road, at that time.  There was a memorial service at the 'new' Baptist Church Wednesday night.  Mom said she couldn't go.  There was another service today at the fire house.   Mom was going out of town shopping with my sister.  As Dad said, she lives with the memories every day.  She didn't need the extra drama.