Gas Blast Sets School Afire, Kills 2 Men

A gas explosion tore apart a school and ignited a fire, killing two men and injuring a third. One of the men, a school administrator, died after being trapped for hours under debris.

“At this point in time, everything is indicating accidental in nature and we’re investigating it under those circumstances,” said state Fire Marshal Dan Carlson.

He said the explosion was caused by a propane gas leak that was somehow ignited. The blast and fire gutted the original brick school building and heavily damaged a newer addition.

School officials had smelled the gas about 5:30 p.m. Friday and evacuated wrestlers from the gym, Carlson said. The explosion happened about two hours later, when only the three men were inside.

“You can see that the entire roof and assembly above the area is gone. We don’t know where it is, and there were at least two layers of concrete between where they [the men] were and that roof assembly, and it’s all gone,” Carlson said.

Rescuers pulled sheet metal, concrete and lumber from the rubble Saturday and passed them down a line of about two dozen firefighters to get to a basement storage room where the man identified as a school administrator had been trapped overnight.

They last had voice contact with the man late Friday, about three hours after the blast, when he said he was pinned but breathing, Carlson said.

Carlson wouldn’t identify the man but community members said he was the school’s top administrator, Dave Grode.

An injured volunteer firefighter was hospitalized in serious condition. A school custodian injured in the blast died at a hospital in Sioux Falls. Neither man was identified.

The school housed grades kindergarten through 12, drawing its 190 students from a 250-square-mile area, most of it rural.

Schools from other towns have offered to take the students and have offered supplies, but school board members, meeting Saturday, said they plan to rebuild the school and would rather keep students in town in the interim rather than bus them elsewhere.

“I think the sooner we get these kids together the better it’s going to be,” said Gary Kristensen, a board member.

The board canceled classes for the week. It didn’t take any official action on the students’ future beyond then but discussed using churches and vacant meeting rooms for classrooms.

At the school Saturday, band uniforms, musical instruments, graduation robes, class photographs and other salvaged property were piled outside the building.

Firefighters emptied the town’s water tower to fight the blaze.

Plankinton has about 600 residents and is about 90 miles west of Sioux Falls.