PORT ANGELES — Erv Schleufer had just stood up after finishing a late-night cup of coffee at a restaurant he frequented along Front Street when the world fell apart around him.
Schleufer saw an orange flash through the plate glass window of Haguewood’s Restaurant, nestled in the ground floor of the Olympus Hotel building near the corner of Laurel and Front streets, while a shockwave from a bone-shaking explosion struck him in the chest and pushed him backward, throwing him face-down in debris on the restaurant floor.
“That blast hurt all the way down to the marrow,” Schleufer said.
The explosion rent a 60-foot-long, 8-foot-deep trench in the concrete sidewalk, destroyed the entire front of the restaurant and shattered windows of neighboring buildings.
Lasting impact
Schleufer, 16 at the time, and his group of four friends drinking coffee at a table right next to the restaurant’s front window were just a handful of the 37 people injured in the explosion, which rocked the Olympus Hotel building and demolished the restaurant at about 11:30 p.m. Sept. 30, 1971.
One of the injured later died after the blast.
The explosion was blamed on built-up butane and oxygen that reportedly had leaked out of a gas line running underneath the sidewalk and ignited.
Fire and emergency officials at the time called it the worst explosion in the history of Port Angeles.
In 1972, according to Port Angeles City Council minutes, the Natural Gas Corp., which maintained the gas lines running underneath the city and went out of business not long after the explosion, agreed to surrender to the city the rights to build any new gas lines.
Gas lines running underneath the city eventually were closed down by city fire officials, according to council meeting minutes.
Now 58, Schleufer made the 400-mile trip from Spokane on June 1 to visit the site of the 1971 gas line explosion that he said has left a lasting impact on his life.
Schleufer said he got the idea to see the site himself after he reconnected with Mike Schulte, who as an 18-year-old was sitting directly across the table from Schleufer when the gas line blew.
‘Kind of closure’
“I felt we needed to go to this place, and the more I thought about it, the more I felt it might give [a] kind of closure,” Schleufer said.
That night 42 years ago, just as he had on countless nights before, Schulte drove 16-year-old Schleufer and mutual friends Danny Johnson and John Sipe, also 16, to Haguewood’s for a cup of coffee and a smoke after Schleufer and Johnson finished work at Johnson’s father’s gas station in Gales Addition.
The four teenagers were just getting ready to leave Haguewood’s when Johnson said he wanted to get another half-cup of coffee.
Schleufer said he didn’t want to wait, but Johnson was insistent, so the four stayed behind for what Schleufer described as only a few minutes.
It was a decision that likely saved all of their lives, Schleufer said.
“Had we just left, we probably would have been on the sidewalk when that thing went off,” he said.
Schleufer and his friends eventually were taken to the hospital now known as Olympic Medical Center and treated for their relatively minor injuries amid the cries of pain of dozens of other people hurt in the blast.
The stitched-up gash on the back of his head that he sustained in the blast has long since healed, Schleufer said.
But the memories of the explosion and the sights he saw have plagued him with recurring dreams.
Destroyed car
One dream repeated the scene of him climbing over a destroyed car outside the restaurant to get away from the scene, without Schleufer never being able to escape.
This dream stayed with Schleufer for years until he called Port Angeles officials and asked for archived newspaper reports about the explosion.
One of those yellowed, brittle pages featured a photo of the exact car Schleufer had been dreaming about.
Once he looked at it, the recurring dream ended.
“I needed to look at the car to finally fill in the blank, and it finally stopped,” Schleufer said.
After Johnson and Sipe died in the early 2000s, Schleufer said, he realized Schulte was the only person he knew who could understand what the explosion was like.
So Schleufer arranged to drive to Port Angeles with Schulte, who now lives in Spanaway, to visit the explosion site, now the home of the LEVX building and adjoining parking lot.
Schleufer said he had not seen Schulte in 30 years when they met last weekend to walk the former spot of Haguewood’s.
“This has been an experience,” Schulte said while walking the site and reminiscing with Schleufer.
To mark the occasion, Schleufer and Schulte stopped by Captain T’s Gift Shoppe and Custom Stuff, which sits next to the former location of the Olympus Hotel, during their visit and had shirts made reading “I survived the 1971 Haguewood’s Restaurant explosion.”
In an interview days after the visit, Schleufer said visiting the spot with Schulte and speaking with others about it eased his mind.
“I felt like I had something to say all these years about it,” Schleufer said.
“I’ve said it, and I felt better about it.”
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Reporter Jeremy Schwartz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jschwartz@peninsuladailynews.com.
