It happened here: Two Yakima soldiers killed in bizarre hunting accident that caused an explosion | Passed

A bang, a cloud of smoke and broken windows accompanied the morning of July 29, 1956 in Terrace Heights and Yakima.

It wasn’t a stray grenade from what is now the Yakima Training Center or the start of World War III. In fact, it was a bizarre hunting accident that claimed the lives of two Yakima soldiers and sparked calls for better storage of explosives like dynamite.

In an email to the Yakima Herald Republic, Richard Wadley recalled hearing an explosion rock his family’s Terrace Heights home when he was 13.

News reports said windows were smashed in homes in Terrace Heights and the Fruitvale neighborhood of Yakima, while a mushroom cloud was visible for miles.

The explosion occurred east of the Terrace Heights landfill, where rescue workers found a crater described in news reports as 20 feet deep, 75 feet long and 50 feet wide.

Inside the crater was a 15-by-15-foot powder magazine operated by the Tire Sales and Equipment Co. of Yakima on land leased from the Yakima Sheep Company. The landfill manager, whose house had a wall blown down by the explosion, told sheriffs he had seen two men hunting rabbits in the area before the explosion, but he did not think much of it, as it was common for people there to go shooting.

Officials identified the hunters as Army Spc. 3rd Class Ralph Rice and Private First Class Ronald Foster from wallets they found in a nearby parked car whose rear window had been blown out by the force of the explosion.

The men, who had graduated from Yakima High School two years earlier, were members of the 38th Infantry Division, stationed at what is now Lewis-McChord Air Base. They had joined the Army in January 1955 and were home on a three-day leave for the hunt.

An hour after the first explosion, Wadley rode his bicycle to the scene and saw a group of men standing over the remains of the two soldiers, who had literally been blown to pieces.

Search crews found the men’s remains scattered up to 900 meters from the crater. They also found the remains of a shotgun the men were carrying.

The theory responsible for the explosion was that the men were out hunting and were armed with a 12-gauge shotgun and an M-1 military rifle when a rifle bullet struck the powder house, penetrating the wall and detonating the five tons of dynamite and other explosives in the building.

For comparison: The heaviest multi-purpose bombs of World War II had an explosive force of 1,000 pounds of TNT.

Although dynamite is a relatively stable explosive, it is not impossible to detonate it with a shot.

The explosion prompted another explosives dealer to empty the contents of his magazine to avoid a similar accident.

Gene Souder, the owner of the now-demolished Powder House, said he plans to rebuild in the area, but residents told the Yakima Morning Herald they would oppose the plan.

The Yakima County Commission also discussed the possibility of requiring the energy storage facilities to be located underground to protect them from ricochets.

Rice is buried in Terrace Heights Memorial Park, while Foster is buried in West Hills Cemetery.

“It Happened Here” is a weekly history column by Yakima Herald-Republic reporter Donald W. Meyers. Reach him at [email protected] or 509-577-7748. Sources for this week’s column include the Yakima Valley Libraries, FamilySearch.org, FindaGrave.com, Richard Wadley and the Yakima Hearld-Republic archives.