PHOTOS: On April 4, 1987, a thick black cloud billowed into the skies above Minot, carrying with it the haze of smoke, the stinging acrid stench of chemicals, and the uncertainty of an unfolding disaster. What began as a routine Saturday morning soon transformed into a public emergency, forcing more than 10,000 Minot residents to flee their homes. The source: a fire ignited inside a chemical warehouse on Minot’s southeast edge, sending toxic fumes drifting North over not just the bulk of Minot, but all the way into Canada. Today, the memory of the Westchem fire lives on in the city’s distant memory, but it offers a great view into a disaster that could’ve ended much worse.
At approximately 11:05 a.m., flames erupted from a Ford F-250 pickup truck parked inside the Westchem Agricultural Chemicals Inc. warehouse on 27th Street SE, where today’s Menards is located. The truck, later found to have an “improperly wired aftermarket dome light connected without proper circuit protection”, became the unexpected ignition point. The fire spread rapidly through the cement block warehouse, and quickly reached barrels of pesticides and herbicides, including parathion and malathion, two toxic insecticides.
The fire grew at an intense pace, feeding on chemical fuels and actually exploding drums. Flames soared more than 40 feet in the air, sending fireballs mushrooming into the sky that were seen from North Hill. Within minutes, a thick black toxic cloud began to drift northward over the city. Winds, which are predominantly out of the NW, were gusting up to 30 miles per hour, and coming out of the South. This carried the cloud straight up Broadway, cutting a swath of fumes up to seven miles north, with some smoke reportedly reaching 50 miles into Canada.
