‘It scared us to death.’ What witnesses saw and heard when a Kentucky gas pipeline exploded

Noise that sounded like a train wreck, a plane crash or a tornado. Flames so bright the dark 1:30 a.m. sky turned to daylight.

A Lincoln County gas explosion and fire killed one person and injured five more, but it left countless others afraid in the middle of the night with no idea what happened. They watched or ran as an explosion and fire consumed part of the nearby Indian Camp Trailer Park where one died and several others were injured.

Asleep in his nearby Lincoln County mobile home at around 1:15 a.m. Thursday, Keith Demaree and his sister woke up to what he thought was a train wreck. For Demaree, whose home is about 400 yards away from the site of the blast, the noise he heard was nothing like what he soon saw from his home.

“It looked like a Saturn 5 rocket turned upside down. It was blazing,” said Demaree.

Demaree and his visiting sister, Elizabethtown resident Laura Biehl, had to yell at each other in the home because the noise from the fire was so loud, and they could walk inside the house without lights because of the light from the flames, he said. They remained at the property while watching the fire.

But his 5-year-old blue heeler, Nicki, got scared by the explosion and ran outside. The dog was missing.

Demaree walked and drove up and down the roads looking for Nicki with no success. “I sure hope my girl comes home,” he said.

Doug Alsman could feel the heat from the fire at his home around a quarter-mile away from the blast site. His sister staying with him, Vicki Taylor, thought a tornado woke her up.

Pieces of burnt shale rock and ash were falling like hail into their lawn and the blaze brightened the sky as clear as day, Alsman said.

Taylor, Alsman and his young son immediately left the home. The boy was wearing his night clothes and Alsman was shirtless with no shoes on.

“We didn’t know what was going on,” Alsman said.

“It looked like it was coming toward us,” Taylor added.

Jason Griffitts and his wife live on a farm adjoining the trailer park.

“It shook the house so hard,” he said of the blast. He and his wife left the property and watched from a car further down the road. First responders told them they would have to evacuate from that spot because there were concerns the heat from the first explosion would make one of two other gas lines blow up, Griffits said.

About 1 1/2 miles away, Lincoln County School Board member Win Smith said he stared out the window and found that “everything was so bright and so loud,“ that he started loading up their animals.

They decided to stay put when they realized that the flames were not close. Smith awoke to an ash-covered driveway, but he’s grateful that he wasn’t among the victims of the explosion.

“It was pretty brutal,” Smith said.

This story was originally published August 1, 2019 at 1:12 PM.