Formac Distributing is a publishing company working out of a two story warehouse/office building in the south end of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Across the parking lot and past another smaller warehouse rises the Halifax Grain Elevator. While it still stores grain and flour its current principle use is for wood chips used in stoves. It is a massive concrete structure.. We are roughly parallel to it and halfway along.

Shortly after 11:40 am. on Thursday August 7, I went upstairs at Formac to check something with a coworker. Pam's desk has a magnificent view of the length of the elevator and as we talked we heard a long low rumble like very close thunder and then suddenly from halfway up the wall of the elevator a gust of concrete and siding came bursting away and a huge orange fireball about the size of a house's car garage came bursting towards us. The fireball unfurled and shot up the side of the wall like a Bunsen burner flame and vanished into the air above the building! "Everybody get down and away from the windows" I yelled. Two other people (Meghan and Jennifer) worked at the front of our building and were considerably closer to the point that had exploded. While they have large plate glass windows their desks both faced away from the windows. Fortunately, the blast had not seemed to have cracked our windows or blown anything against our building. Marianne, was working in the middle of our building, far away from the windows. She said later that she thought I had dropped something heavy in the warehouse and was then surprised to see me standing behind her!

Everyone rushed together into the middle of the building while I called 911. They had already (in less than 2 minutes) received several calls - so I dashed downstairs, grabbed my camera and scooted outside. Smoke was pouring from the hole obscuring what might have happened or might still be happening but there weren't any flames to be seen or anything falling off so I continued towards the building, snapping pictures and looking to see if anyone was hurt. The walkway beside the elevator is a popular trail and presumably, while few people worked in a building this vast, they might be nearest whatever caused the explosion. A neighbor from up the street was already closer than I was and a police car was already zooming down both the side streets that run up to the elevator. One of them passed me and as the cop got out she waved to me to get back. Not seeing or hearing anyone calling for help, it seemed like a good idea. I joined my coworkers who were now all out on our front lawn.

We had a hurried discussion about whether we were better off outside or inside and whether anything else seemed likely to explode. As it didn't and as Marianne is a volunteer fire fighter and was giving us a run down on what was happening as the fire trucks arrived - we stayed on the lawn except for a brief foray into our building to call our owner, who happened to be on vacation in Prince Edward Island, and a quick instant message over Yahoo to our Toronto office. By the time we were all outside again there were several fire trucks, police cars, news reporters and neighbors everywhere. No ambulances or sirens from any so we took that as a sign that no one was hurt. It turned out that one of the neighbors had been on a vacation flight to Cuba with Pam back in February and while they chatted about that the rest of us listened to Marianne explain that she had been taught that in an emergency an area as far out as one and half times the height of the building would be evacuated we realized that work for today was definitely canceled. Shortly before noon an officer came over and asked us to evacuate. When I asked how to check when it was safe to come back he suggested listening to the news.

So we went in, turned off all the computers and other things locked up and headed out. Being lunch time, Meghan and I (the only two employees without cars) headed down to a nearby park to eat and see what developed. There were several others in the park, also evacuated from nearby homes and the police perimeter was at the edge of the park - about ½ mile from the elevator. After eating we noticed a couple of fire trucks head down onto a road leading to the waterfront. We followed them as this road came up to the grain elevator from the other side and we could see the whole thing from another angle. The perimeter was still a good distance away from the elevator but it was an imposing site. From here the explosion wasn't very obvious as it was a fairly hazy day and the building looks kind of run down anyway. The news crews were all there, though, as they had been evacuated from our side too.

After watching for a few minutes we took a stroll along the Halifax waterfront, which from here north has been developed into a boardwalk. This lead us after about 10 minutes directly into the Buskers Festival which had started that day at noon! The calm after the storm and only a few blocks away - oblivious to the whole thing. So leaving the destruction behind, we had a fun afternoon watching buskers and drinking fresh made lemonade until supper time took us our separate ways.

About the pictures.
Pages 1 to 3 were shot that day. Pages 4 and 5 are from the next day. These more clearly show the destruction, which for all of us was both a big explosion but on the scale of things a rather small one. Page 6 has some photos taken several months after.

Steven Slater Aug. 2003 All material © 2003 by Steven Slater. All rights reserved - but link lots!