Around this time 41 years ago, I was just starting back to classes for winter quarter at the University of Tennessee. Yes, we were on quarters back then. After the month-long holiday break, I was just a week into my studies when I came down with a raging case of mononucleosis. My boyfriend at the time, it turns out, did not just have a cold. I had to call all my professors to see if they would excuse me missing a few weeks of classes as long as I kept up with work. If not, I would have to drop the class. All were completely cool with it.
The previous quarter, my first, got off to a much better start for me. But just as registration was wrapping up in mid-September 1984 (we were a proper country then, there was no going back to school, ANY school, before Labor Day), Knoxville faced down one of the greatest conflagrations in its history.
It was Sept. 19, 1984. I was done with what I needed to do on campus before classes started and was headed back to Fountain City on my usual route, 17th Street to Dale Avenue to 275 North. Before I even got on the interstate, I could see the huge plumes of black smoke billowing into the sky. Once I was on 275, I could see the flames. Traffic going in both directions was slowed by the sight of the inferno. The ConAgra grain plant was on its way to absolute ruin.
The Security Mills (later ConAgra) grain elevator in the 1930s (McClung digital collection).
A little before noon, an explosion occurred in the 10-story, concrete grain elevator, sending chunks of debris into other buildings. Two more explosions happened roughly 20 and 40 minutes after the first. Though, amazingly, most of the employees on site safely evacuated, three in the immediate area of the first blast were killed and 10 others were injured. Cars and semi-trucks were mangled. It took the full weight of the Knoxville Fire Department to get the fire under control. The KFD was on site for days following monitoring for and putting out hotspots.
At the time, according to the AFL-CIO, the tragedy in Knoxville was 13th grain elevator explosion that year and the 370th since 1958, with 113 workers killed as a result. The value of the facility was estimated at just over $700,000. Once the flames were out, it was a total loss. For a time, the company resumed its warehousing operations from a leased building on Sevier Avenue, but never rebuilt on that site.
Security Mills ad from a UT program.
Though the facility had been owned by ConAgra for a decade at the time of the fire, most folks then (and now) still referred to it as Security Mills or Security Feed. It had been providing jobs, tucked between Baxter and Bernard avenues on the Norfolk-Southern rail line just east of the interstate for 65 years. One of my great uncles, James “Jake” Johnston, made a career there and was named president of the company in 1963. Its feed sacks came with instructions for removing the print so they could be reused to make clothes. And then one day, it was gone.
Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.
Sources: The Knoxville Journal digital archives, McClung digital collection
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Found this article last night about the September 1984 ConAgra grain mill explosion in Knoxville. My father had been the plant maintenance foreman for ConAgra (aka Security Mills before ConAgra bought the plant) for many years…probably 25 to 30+ years. My family was lucky that my Dad was not at work that day. If he’d been there, he surely would have been another person that likely would have died there. (My cousin’s husband did die in the explosion along with 2 other men.) My parents house had gotten broke into and robbed and ransacked the Friday before the explosion. They had stolen my parents van also. This robbery was very upsetting to my parents. (Their elderly next door neighbor had also been robbed.) By Sunday night the police had found my parents van abandoned. They called and arranged for my Dad to take off from work to pick up the van the day the explosion happened. So for my family, while the robbery had been a terrible thing to happen, it was the reason of why my Dad got to live to be 90. For my cousin and her 2 young boys and the families of the other two men, it was the worse day of their lives. My brother and I worked at TVA downtown. My mother had let me know that morning Dad was not going to be at work that day but my brother did not know that. Being in the upper floors of the TVA downtown buildings, you could see the flames of the plant burning. He called me in a panic thinking Dad was there. I told him he wasn’t there. As soon as my father got his van, he went back to the plant to see the aftermath. It took days before the fires were eliminated. The reason so few died in the explosion was because it happened around lunch time. Most of the plant workers went to lunch at the same time, leaving a skeleton crew to do what was needed. My father would have been on that skeleton crew and would have died that day had it not been for their house robbery. Sometimes bad things happen to you but God can change that horrible situation to be what in the end saved his life. He mourned the men who lost their lives that day and mourned the loss of the mill that he worked for so long and wondered if he had been there would things had been different. He was able to continue his career with ConAgra first working a year at different plants in the south. After a year of working away from their Knoxville home, he was given a chance to move and relocate to the mill in Jacksonville FL and that’s how they moved there. I don’t know why our family had God’s favor that day and not the other families that lost lives and those that lost their jobs. I’m thankful for our blessing and pray for the other families and what they had to go thru.
My grandfather retired as president from Security Mills around the time that your great uncle became president. He started in sales when he was in his 20s.
I appreciate you giving the location of the plant. My mother couldn’t remember exactly where it was located.
My husband ‘s family bought Security Feed for his pony growing up. One of his prized possessions is a Security Feed bag I had framed one year for Christmas. (I know, a little weird!)