Hub Oil explosion

The Hub Oil explosion was an industrial accident that took place on August 9, 1999 in Calgary, Alberta and caused two fatalities. The Hub Oil refinery was located at 5805 17th Ave. S.E., near the eastern edge of Calgary and immediately south of the residential community of Penbrooke.

The Kalmacoff family’s roots are in Kamsack, Saskatchewan where Jake Kalmacoff Sr. built a conventional crude oil refinery in the ‘30s which also re-refined used lube oil for the Air Force during World War II, and was designated essential to the war effort. His son, Jake Kalmacoff Jr. moved to Calgary with his family in 1958 and acquired the dormant Monarch Refinery in what was then the Village of Hubalta, Alberta. It had been built in 1939, but only operated for 2 years before being shut down. Jake Jr. applied similar re-refining technology that the family had developed during the war, and named the business Hub Oil Company Ltd.

Building on past experience, the Company collected and recycled used lubricating oil from industrial and commercial businesses. In the ‘90s, the Company began collecting and recycling used oil filters, used plastic oil containers and used antifreeze. At its height, the facility collected and recycled 15 million litres of used oil annually.

The facility’s end product was a base mineral oil that, with additives, could be compounded and blended into a variety of products, including automotive engine oil, transmission fluid, gear oil and other industrial lubricants. Much of the industrial oil was sold to the potash mines in Saskatchewan. Because the oil is considered food grade, the potash companies are able to use it as an anti-clumping and dust suppressing spray acceptable for potash that would eventually become fertilizer for the food industry. The metal in the oil filters was used to make rebar for the construction industry; the plastic was used to create myriad recycled materials; and the antifreeze became clean, usable antifreeze once again.

For more than nine hours after the initial explosion, the fire raged out of control, fueled by oil, jet fuel, and propane. Two more major explosions followed shortly after the first.

C S Martin was asleep at a nearby house on Penworth Place at the time of the first explosion. He remembers it vividly. "Since I was three years old, I grew up in Penbrooke and at one point, I lived on Penrith Crescent less than a kilometer from the blast site. The people in the community always talked about the smells coming from Hub Oil. Many people suffered from frequent headaches, and symptoms not unlike those from the community of Lynwood Ridge. The morning of the blast, I was in bed, and was wakened by the sound of Thunder. I looked out my bedroom window, and the sky was blue, but I thought nothing of it. Moments later, my mother banged on the door and told me to wake up, as she thought Hub Oil had exploded; as she always thought it would. We drove to a pedestrian bridge over train tracks close to a mobile home park close to the blast, and from that vantage point about 35 feet above the horizon, we could see the damage and feel the intense heat from the flame. Later, a very large radius including this bridge, and up to 100 feet from my home were evacuated. My family decided to head south to my Aunt & Uncle's house on Riverside Crescent which I later bought from them in 2011. Safely evacuated, all we could do was watch on the news to see if any more tanks had ruptured and wiped out the community. The fire burned out, and we returned home to find fallout for weeks to come. That day faded into nothing more than a memory."

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