A 1967 Fiery Disaster in The Plains
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By John T. Toler
Screen shot from Turner Foster’s film, taken from the Marshall side of the railroad tracks, shows the smoke and hellish fire. The brick Chinn Hotel at left was saved.
Map of the area of The Plains fire shows the point of collision and where the fire spread. The shaded structures were the ones that were lost. Courtesy of Henry Rust
massive fire broke out in The Plains on the afternoon of Feb. 21, 1967, when a tank truck loaded with fuel oil collided with a 19-car freight train at the Main Street railroad crossing. “We never realized that such a catastrophe could occur in a small, rural town like The Plains,” Fire Chief George Beavers said at the time. “Circumstances arise, and we have to make the best out of them.” It was about 2:50 p.m., and truck driver James Hillard, 24, of Shepherdstown, W.Va., was headed westbound through The Plains. The crossing bell and signal light at the rail crossing were operating, but apparently Shepherd’s brakes failed, and he crashed into a locomotive passing through. The force of the impact knocked the locomotive off the tracks, and within seconds, the truck exploded in a fireball. Hillard died in the wreckage, but trainmen on the locomotive managed to flee the flames by jumping out the other side. “The crash split a 500-gallon fuel tank on the locomotive, spilling fuel that mixed with gasoline from the truck’s tanks, “ according to The Fauquier Democrat. “The cab of the truck was carried a short distance by the train and smashed the crossing signal light.” Just missed by the truck was a propane gas railroad car, immediately behind the locomotive.”If that car had been full, we would have had to evacuate the whole town,” Assistant Chief Barney Brittle told the newspaper. Chief Beavers recalled that one of the train crew was a member of the Penn-Daw (Fairfax County) Fire Company and had the presence of mind to run to the nearby buildings and warn the occupants to evacuate. “A bitter west wind fanned the flames, which almost immediately set fire to the Piedmont Feed and Lumber Company buildings,” according to The
Democrat. Inside the feed store office were employees Roger Williams, Mary Jane Cooper and Bob Gibson. “It hit. We started running, and ran into all this fuel,” Williams told the newspaper. “It was spraying down us like a mist. There was an explosion, and then the fire. We were out the front door in five seconds.” Threatened by the fire was the nearby three-story, six-unit Patterson Apartments (originally the Orange County Hunt Club House), but all of the occupants managed to escape with some of their possessions before the structure was consumed by fire. Brittle was working at the nearby Farmers Exchange, and immediately ran to the firehouse, blew the siren and called Fauquier Fire Control, asking for all available firefighting equipment to be sent to The Plains. Within three minutes, Brittle was on the scene
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MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABILITY COMMITTEE| Winter 2024
with the first of The Plains pumper trucks, which was positioned to protect the Cochran Lodge. Beavers, who had been working at Kinloch, arrived minutes later with another truck, and a direct line was set up from the 18,000-gallon reservoir at the firehouse to the fire. An 8,000-gallon tank used by nearby businesses was also tapped, but soon both were depleted. The emergency response eventually included every fire company in Fauquier County, as well as units from Prince William, Loudoun, Warren and Rappahannock counties, Vint Hill Farms Station, the Warrenton Training Center and Town of Strasburg. Two foam trucks from Dulles International Airport also arrived on the scene, escorted down narrow Route 55 by State Police units. Beavers credited the foam trucks with extinguishing the fuel-fed inferno around the
