52 years later, survivors of HMCS Kootenay disaster find strength through each other
Global News
Saturday marked the 52nd anniversary of an explosion on the HMCS Kootenay, which left nine people dead and 53 with injuries.
Survivors of the Canadian navy’s worst peacetime accident are finding healing through their shared experience.
On Oct. 23, 1969, a gearbox failure caused the explosion in the engine room of the HMCS Kootenay as it took part in sea trials off the southwest coast of England.
“As I was walking up the flats, the engine room blew up and I looked down the flats and could see this big fireball towards me,” said David William Gourley, who worked in the operations room as a radar plotter.
“We ran like hell up the ladder out onto the bridge on the flag deck, and the ship was just full of smoke.”
Of the more than 240 crew members on board the ship that day, nine died and 53 others were injured.
“There was 10 of us in the engine room, only three of us got out alive,” said Allan “Dinger” Bell, who was on duty in the engine room at the time.
The memory still haunts him, he said. “I’ve been trying to get out of the engine room for 52 years, can’t seem to get out, can’t forget it.”
Gourley said many of the survivors got PTSD.
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