A look back at water tank rupture

A water tank rupture this week 70 years ago that killed four people, injured three and caused an estimated $500,000 in property damage near downtown Tucumcari wasn't due to sabotage, nor was it caused by a meteor from outer space, as once speculated.

Instead, poor workmanship while building the 1.25-million-gallon tank was cited as the cause.

The calamity dampened preparations by residents for the Christmas holiday and continued to have ripple effects months later.

Information for this story was compiled from recent interviews and newspaper archives, including contemporary accounts from the Tucumcari Daily News.

The disaster

The ground-level water tank, which measured 30 feet tall and 100 feet across, burst about 4:10 a.m. on Dec. 13, 1951.

Witnesses compared the sound to a strong wind, thunder or a jet plane.

A railroad worker, Henry Folkes, said he heard "a loud rumble."

"I walked toward the noise and saw everything in God's creation floating down Main Street," he said.

Mrs. Claude Moncus, wife of the sheriff, said she heard what she thought was a jet plane in her upper-floor apartment one block away.

"I saw shadows flashing across the wall after the noise," she said. "The shadows were reflections of the debris flying through the air."

The rushing water and debris crushed one home just west of the tank, killing Dee Elliott, his wife Eva San Miguel Elliott and their 18-month-old child, Tony.

Rescuers dug the bodies of the Elliott family from the debris of their adobe home after it was struck by a flying sheet of three-eighths-inch steel from the broken tank.

Two other children in the Elliott home at the time survived. Tony's twin brother, Tommy, was rescued by his 17-year-old brother. Annabelle, 6, removed herself from the wreckage without aid.

To the east, the rush of water shattered the home of Joe Gallegos. His 13-year-old son, Steve, was found dead in the street 100 feet away. It was determined he probably drowned. Grady Maples, owner of KTNM radio in Tucumcari, said he helped lift the roof off the boy's body with wedges, jacks and pry bars.

Bob Dominguez said in a recent interview he knew the Gallegos boy.

"He was my buddy. We went to St. Anne's together, and he and I were Boy Scouts," he said.

"His house was catty-corner from the tank, and it swept him out of his bedroom."

Rescuers found the boy's mother holding rosary beads and praying amid the wreckage of their home. She and another child were trapped inside until rescuers forced open a jammed door. Steve's twin brother was thrown from his bed by the impact, but he and his 6-year-old sister escaped injury.

Three other people were hospitalized with minor injuries.

Waters gushed over a three-block area and quarter-mile to the Southern Pacific railroad tracks. It demolished four buildings and about 15 homes. People who saw the disaster zone said it looked as though a bomb went off.

James Crocker, who later became a photographer for the Tucumcari Daily News, accompanied his insurance-agent father to the disaster scene as a 6-year-old.

"It knocked a couple of houses completely down and destroyed a body shop near the railroad," Crocker recalled in a recent interview. "People were wailing and bawling and carrying on."

The deluge swept a large steel barn housing city equipment off its foundation and carried it 300 feet. A laundry business across the street from the tank was damaged, as were a warehouse and a welding shop. Smaller buildings were piled in a heap at Fourth and West Center streets.

Water rose to waist-deep in parts of town, leaving oil barrels and debris on downtown streets.

J.D. Armstrong, superintendent of the city's power and light division, said chunks of sidewalk weighing 300 to 400 pounds were carried a block by the surging waters.

Kitchens were set up near the scene to provide hot coffee and rolls for rescue workers. The National Guard was called to help with rescue efforts.

As bad as the death toll was, city engineer Bert Ridling said it could have been worse.

"Had it been a few hours later, many more probably would have been killed," he said.

The disaster cut off electricity to some sections of the city and knocked KTNM off the air, though power was restored later that evening.

It also cut off the city's water supply. City workers installed an emergency pumping unit hauled in from Clovis to draw water from wells into the mains. The state health department dispatched staff members with emergency chlorinators and water-testing equipment. Service was restored by that afternoon, though a boil order was issued.

The disaster and resulting water shortage prompted the temporary closing of schools.

The annual Christmas parade continued, though it bypassed the damaged area.

The three members of the Elliott family and Steve Gallegos were buried in Tucumcari Memorial Park cemetery.

A fireball?

One witness reported seeing a fireball, or a meteor, in the darkness just before the tank broke open.

Another witness also said he saw a fireball: "I saw the light streak across the sky and land close to the tank."

An expert in such phenomena contacted by the Daily News expressed doubts about those stories, saying such a meteor would have left a crater.

A University of New Mexico professor, Lincoln LaPaz, said the flashes of light seen about the time of tank rupture were caused by short-circuits of high-tension wires as they came into contact with the ground.

Theories of sabotage were fueled by the discovery of several small batteries near the tank site.

Local law enforcement, however, said one battery came from a wrecked home, and the others came from the shattered city warehouse.

City Manager A.J. Fleming said he believed an explosion caused the tank collapse. He called the FBI and state fire marshal's office, asking them to investigate.

City employees, however, said there was no evidence of an explosion.

Marvin May, a UNM professor and a civil engineer, also said he found no evidence of an explosion, nor a meteor, at the tank.

He said the rushing water from the water-tank collapse would have created a force equivalent to "20 locomotives hitting at the same time."

Aftermath

A few days later, a New Mexico Society of Professional Engineers committee issued a preliminary report, stating a faulty weld caused the tank collapse.

The committee studied the remnants of the tank three days after the disaster and looked into a welding test report by an Albuquerque lab.

"The collapse of the structure was due to the failure of a very faulty vertical weld in the lower section of the tank wall," the panel's report stated. "There was no observed evidence of any external force having disrupted the tank," and "there was no observed evidence of any explosion, either internal or external."

A later report by the panel stated the tank was not built to American Water Works Association specifications.

"It was of lighter weight steel and was designed for oil storage," it stated.

Fleming said the city purchased the tank from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which previously used it to supply a construction camp while building Conchas Dam in 1939 to 1941.

The tank was dismantled, moved to Tucumcari and reassembled for city use in 1944 or 1945.

The city faced at least 11 claims totaling more than $250,000 over the tank collapse, including an $89,500 suit filed by a city commissioner over the loss of his laundry business and a $120,000 suit on behalf of the Elliotts.

A jury in October 1952 awarded the Elliott estate $20,832 after a trial.

A couple from Whitney, Texas, who had lost two children of their own offered to adopt the two Elliott children orphaned by the disaster. It is unclear whether that adoption occurred.