Remembering the Port Neal fertilizer plant explosion 30 years later [Video]

SIOUX CITY (KTIV) – On December 13, 1994, Siouxland was rocked by a massive explosion at the Port Neal fertilizer plant near Salix, Iowa. The early-morning blast at Terra International leveled the plant, killing four people and injuring 18 others. It also released a cloud of ammonia that forced the evacuation of more than two-thousand people. Former Woodbury County Emergency Services Director Gary Brown remembers it like it was yesterday.

” I, like most everybody in Siouxland, I felt it,” said Brown. “I was just ready to head out the door for work when I heard the explosion, or felt the explosion.”

In an instant, he had a pretty good idea what had just happened.

Brown said, “It was pretty clear to me, knowing Woodbury County and what could have made that loud of noise, it had to have come from somewhere down in the Port Neal Complex.”

Within 20 minutes, he was on the scene.

“It was …