American Notes MISSOURI

"Explosion just as we pulled up in here. Get us all kinds of ambulances." That urgent message was radioed by fire battalion chief Marion Germann moments after a huge explosion at a Kansas City construction site last week. At 4 a.m. two engines manned by six fire fighters had raced to battle a blaze engulfing a pickup truck. They had barely arrived at the scene when the powerful blast erupted in a nearby trailer.

Though Germann was a quarter-mile from the scene, the force of the explosion shattered the windshield of his car. As far as ten miles away, houses shook, and people were jolted from their beds. Forty minutes later a second detonation in another trailer bent walls, buckled ceilings and forced the evacuation of hundreds from their homes.

After the blaze was extinguished, fire fighters discovered two smoldering craters, 30 ft. to 40 ft. wide and 7 ft. deep. The death toll in the worst fire-fighting disaster in Kansas City's history: all six of the fire fighters who first arrived at the scene. Investigators suspect arsonists set the fire that ignited more than 20 tons of ammonium nitrate, an explosive used at the construction site. But their search for clues and a motive will be no easy task. The explosion was so destructive that it may have obliterated crucial evidence.