On the afternoon of Monday, Jan. 10, 1910, a tremendous concussive blast swept across Bloomington, the result of an explosion at Union Gas and Electric Co.'s west-side plant. | From Our Past page

Workers were in a basement extending a 10-inch gas main so it could reach another main running up Washington Street. They placed a rubber bag over the blind end of the main, the purpose being to hold back the gas while they worked on the connection. Tragically, the bag either developed a tear or was simply blown off, and the cramped room quickly filled with gas. The workers, disoriented from the effects of the gas, somehow managed to scramble up a ladder and head toward a door leading outside. As they fled for their lives, the volatile gas reached the open flame of a regulator, or gauge, attached to a piece of machinery.

The blast, which occurred at 2:18 p.m., shredded the building's steel and slate roof and shattered windows in the surrounding neighborhood. Bricks rained down on the Chicago and Alton Railroad depot and the Paul F. Beich candy factory, both located one block to the south.

Killed were clerk George N. Eddy and laborers Ferdinand Krueger and Lon Lostutter. Death was instantaneous for Eddy and Lostutter while Krueger died in an ambulance on route to St. Joseph's Hospital. Father A. F. Timmons of St. Patrick's Church prayed over the unconscious Krueger while his life slipped away.

Bloomington firefighters used axes and improvised battering rams to knock down walls in order to reach the dead and wounded. Plant supervisor Joseph Veatch was pulled from the wreckage, though he was "too stunned to talk, and did not appear to comprehend anything that was asked of him."

Several C&A boxcars parked next to the plant were "shattered and blown to pieces." Fortunately, a tanker loaded with crude oil withstood the blast, and during the ensuing chaos a group of men shoved the car "down the track out of harm's way."

Workers recovered the body of George Eddy a little after 3 p.m. "He was so badly crushed and mutilated that it was impossible to identify him," The Daily Bulletin reported. "His head was crushed, nearly every bone in his body broken, and his face smashed out of all semblance to a human being."

Survivor David Lostutter told The Daily Pantagraph that he was on the main floor while his brother Lon and others worked on the gas main below. "I told my brother to go outside and get some fresh air and had he done so he would be alive today," David Lostutter recalled. "I started for the door. I had gone a few steps when the explosion occurred. The wall struck me on the head and I was buried under three feet of brick and debris." He suffered a fractured skull, broken right arm and bruises on his head and chest.

His brother Lon was not so fortunate, and his "shockingly mangled" body was retrieved around 7 p.m.

The gas at this plant was manufactured in an extraction process that entailed the burning of coal. The city's first gas plant opened in early 1857, an event marked by the lighting of 535 lampposts. Electricity replaced gas for street lighting by the mid-1880s, but coal gas (or "town gas," as it was also called) was still used by businesses and residential customers for heating, cooking and indoor lighting. In fact, natural gas was not piped into Twin City homes until the early 1950s.

As workers picked through the rubble, Bloomington fell into a darkness not known since the years before the Civil War. "Next to the demand for candles was that for lamp wicks," reported The Bulletin. "Housekeepers invariably found when resurrecting their old lamps that the wicks were rotted and useless and had to be replaced. Yards and yards of the cotton fabric went out from every corner grocery."

Union Gas employee Herman Wallman told a jury impaneled by McLean County Coroner James F. Hare that an 8-inch rubber bag was used to plug the 10-inch main. He allowed that this 2-inch difference might have played a role in the leak and subsequent blast. Despite the fact that some jurors expressed "a spirit of antagonism against the gas company," the jury ruled the explosion an accident, absolving the utility of any liabilities.