Kansas City Magazine March 1st, 2023 By Molly Higgins
Firefighters search through the rubble in the aftermath of two explosions at a construction site off of U.S. Highway 71. A deadly combination of twenty-five thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel used to clear the limestone cliffs, caused two storage units to explode, killing six city firefighters. Photo provided by Joe O'Connor.
It was one of the most shocking murder scenes in the history of Kansas City, a town that’s had more than its fair share. In the early hours of November 29, 1988, six city firefighters were killed in the explosion of a storage unit stuffed with twenty-five thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate used to blast through the limestone cliffs on what’s now U.S. Highway 71. The explosion made the city shake, figuratively and literally, sending shockwaves felt five miles away and thirty-five years later.
The Monday after Thanksgiving, a brother and sister working as security guards on a cold and windless night called 911 to report a fire. They claimed to have returned from QuikTrip to find one of the guard’s pickup trucks ablaze. On the call, guard Robert Riggs, who was working the job with his sister Debbie Riggs, said he could also see smoke rising from the construction site they were supposed to be guarding. The Kansas City Fire Department reported to the scene and extinguished the truck fire, then headed down the hill to the other fire. Unfortunately, that fire had reached the trailer full of construction-grade explosives. The firefighters who rushed down to extinguish the blaze were killed. Forty minutes later, after the perimeter was clear, an even larger blast rocked the city.
The cause of the fires was unclear. For years, law enforcement thought it had something to do with labor tensions at the construction site. Later, prosecutors claimed that the fire was set to divert security guards so that people from the neighborhood could pull off a heist of tools from the construction site. The obvious flaw in this theory was that both security guards had left the site—at the same time—and thus were not around to be distracted. The security guard whose truck was destroyed, Debbie, admitted under oath to involvement in a separate automotive insurance fraud scheme.