O’Neill fire crews continue work at night, prepare for Tuesday demolition

O’NEILL, Neb. — More than 12 hours after an explosion rocked the small community of O’Neill, work continues in earnest at the St. Patrick’s Parish Center.

O'Neill residents share personal experiences from explosion

It all started just before 6:00 Monday morning. The parish center is right next to St. Mary’s Catholic School, St. Patrick’s cathedral and Avera St. Anthony’s hospital. The parish center was empty at the time and there were no serious injuries.

The explosion was enormous, casting flames up at least 40 feet high. The building is destroyed. On Monday evening, flames were still occasionally visible in the tar roof. Firefighters are treating the area and a backhoe is removing debris.

“That is a tar roof and there’s multiple layers of that tar roof and that’s really hard to get out. We’re being fairly cautious doing that,” Chief Roger Miller said. “I don’t want anybody up on the structure itself, so we’re using a backhoe and then a master fire stream off of our ladder truck.”

Video from scene of St. Patrick's Parish Center explosion

Miller says the volunteer firefighters were on scene within minutes of the explosion. It took about two hours before they considered the fire manageable.

“I consider it a success,” Miller said. “Nobody was hurt. We achieved our goal that we had set, so at the end of the day, we had a good day. Really no injuries at all.”

One complicating factor was oxygen tanks for the hospital. Fire Department Safety Manager Terry Miles says crews monitored the tanks to make sure they didn’t feed the fire.

“They had already vented themselves,” Miles said. “One of the tanks had been damaged. It’s actually liquid oxygen, and so it was flowing out. There wasn’t flame necessarily that close to it.”

Locals showed their appreciation for the first responders, which included departments from Atkinson, Chambers and Ewing. Some delivered food and drinks. Cody and Kristi Allen from 402 Beef set up next to the scene.

“Gathered up some friends, made some phone calls, we brought our own beef and started cooking hamburgers,” Kristi Allen said.

The work at St. Patrick’s Parish Center will continue on Tuesday.

“Tomorrow, we’ll have contractors in here,” Miller said. “We’ll continue to disassemble that building, sort through the debris, put out any active fire and heat and then we’ll prepare for transfer to a licensed landfill.”

We will have to wait until at least Tuesday before learning specifics about the cause of the fire and explosion.

We know it involved natural gas but we don’t know why gas was present or what the ignition was. There was a wrecked SUV at the scene and it has since been removed. We know that O’Neill Police are involved in the investigation.

Regardless of the findings of the investigation, locals say they’re thankful the explosion occurred before people were at the school or parish center. They’re also thankful for their volunteer firefighters.