Just got done moving my father from his home in Conyers, Georgia to a nearby senior apartment soon after his 85th birthday. He told me the story of how he just missed the “Roseburg Blast”. He was a dynamite salesman (yes!) for Hercules Powder Company and was traveling in the Roseburg area that day. He tried to get a motel room in Roseburg the night before the blast but could not find a vacancy. So instead he drove the rest of the way to our home in Eugene.
Within about a year Hercules had bought the offending company Pacific Powder Company and merged into the Hercules operation.
Here is the Wikipedia version of what happened….
“The Roseburg Blast
On 7 August 1959, at approximately 1:00 a.m., the Gerretsen Building Supply Company[7] caught fire. Firefighters soon arrived at the building, located near Oak and Pine street, to extinguish the fire. Earlier in the evening, a truck driver for the Pacific Powder Company, George Rutherford, had parked his explosives truck in front of the building, a fact which went unnoticed until shortly before the truck exploded, destroying buildings in an eight-block radius and severely damaging 30 more blocks.[8]
The truck was loaded with two tons of dynamite and four-and-a-half tons of the blasting agent nitro carbo nitrate. Rutherford had parked the truck after arranging his delivery for the following morning, despite warnings given to the Pacific Powder Company two days earlier not to leave such trucks unattended or park them in "congested areas." Fourteen people died in the blast and fire and 125 were injured. Damage was estimated at ten to twelve million dollars; the Powder company was eventually made to pay $1.2 million in civil damages, but was acquitted of criminal wrongdoing.[8]
Roseburg's downtown was rebuilt, primarily by businesses using money collected from insurance claims. The city built a new bridge over the South Umpqua River on parcels affected by the disaster.[8] Since the incident, it is commonly referred to as the "Roseburg Blast" or simply "The Blast." In 2005, SOPTV produced a documentary examining the Blast and the experiences of those who were involved or witnessed it, entitled The Roseburg Blast: A Catastrophe and Its Heroes.[9]”
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