Explosion at recycling center rocks portion of Williamsburg Thursday

An explosion at a Williamsburg recycling center Thursday afternoon could be felt and heard from over a mile away.

Williamsburg Fire Chief James Privett said that the explosion happened about 3:20 p.m. when a worker at Eastern Kentucky Recycling, which is off Savoy Road, was digging with an excavator and struck a propane tank that exploded. Fortunately, no one was injured.

"They were digging through some scrap metal and stuff they had here. Evidently, they had some propane tanks in there. There were some tanks laying there that they didn’t know they had until they got to digging in the dirt," Privett said. "They hit a propane tank and it exploded.

"Very, very luckily, no one got hurt, but you could hear the explosion plum downtown. It was loud enough that it shook the fire hall. We were very lucky that no one got injured."

Rick Bauer, who lives about one mile from the recycling center on R.D. Rains Road, said he was sitting on his couch watching television when he heard the blast.

"It was pretty dag gone loud like dynamite going off," Bauer said. "I looked towards the recycling plant here and saw a big ball of smoke."

Bauer said that his brother-in-law’s son works at the recycling center so they jumped in his vehicle and drove there.

"We thought somebody might be hurt or possibly killed," he said. "When we got here fire was up and down that bank. They were dumping dirt on it with the excavator. They were very lucky."

Williamsburg Police Officer Elijah Hunter also assisted at the scene.