The Kinsey Fire Observation Room

[Jono]

Dave, I would check every boxed case of whiskey bottles..just to be sure you did not stumble on a motherload of product !!!! I bet when you first saw those pallets your heart jumped!

P.S. do you see other people there? Are there any security walk throughs? What does the local government do with it.....is it condemned property? I can't believe it can sit there....for years...without some kind of government action.

[dave ziegler]

Jono it has been sitting this way since 1986 when the guy that bought it from Continental leased it to them for bottling Antifreeze and other Industrial stuff! When they gave up partly because he jumped the price up on the lease and because they had made a bad error in selling it and quiting the Whiskey Distilling business.

The guy just shut everything off and abandoned it but must still pay taxes! Those Cases are empty never filled.

I will post some whiskey burned up pictures in Building L here at the end .
Picture 1. a letter talking about something I have talked about a few times here the giant Wooden Barrels that Continental used for a while as a experiment it states they were 337 gal barrels of whiskey.

Here are pictures of Building J inside piles and piles of cased bottles that were never filled!
Pictures 2 tru 10 then pict 11 an old fork lift then pict 12 another case shot.
I found the name of an old Friend written on the elevator Bill Walters I bought my First Pickup truck off of Bill when I worked there a 1941 Chevy with a Caddy Steering wheel!
Next pict is the Barrel Elevator in Building J
then I stood on the fire escape Plaform and took a picture out at the other building backs.

The last pictures are in Building L which was where they stored whiskey that they did not sell when they went to Antifreeze Bottling! These Piles at one time must have been up to the sealing but long before i got there Kids had set all the full bottles on fire. Nothing left but piles of Burned Liquors and Wine and whiskey. It must have happened many years before I got there as even 2 yrs ago there was no smell of smoke. Boy it sure would have been nice to have got some of that stuff before that happened and it must have just burned itself out and never did anything to really hurt the building.
Last pict is of Electric Switches in the building.

This new camera of mine is amazing it how good these pictures taken in total darkness turn out!
Dave Z
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It Seems All The Nicest people Drink Old Hickory
America's Most Magnificent Bourbon
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[dave ziegler]

Just a quick note Pic 16 is of the second floor or Building J nothing up there as no way to put anything up there except through the big roll doors on the wall by hoist or Fork lift! Pict 1.The Letter is dated 1975 From what I know they had some Whiskkeys that were not what they wanted them to be so they were asking permission to fill 2 of their Large 337 Wine Gal Barrels with the stuff for an experiment. They had started the Big Barrel Thing in 1968 as I remember well.

I have Wondered did any other Companys try Large Whiskey Barrels like that, as the 337 Gal ones were the ones I talked about before and how we stacked them and how dam hard they were for us to move on the piles which up if I remember right were 3 high!
Dave Z
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Kinsey The Unhurried Whiskey
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[dave ziegler]

Picture 11 shows the type of Fork lift I was talking about on the Memories thread with those outriggers with little wheels they were hell to unload into the Warehouses. Since I have a long weekend off till tuesday I am going to dig out my Papers from the Fire Drills they had in the 1950's & 60's at Warehouse H and scan them and some other paper work and post them on my different threads.

Just think how weighted down the old 1941 Ford Flat trucks were bringing a Fork lift like the one on the page before over to the Warehouse dock from the Bottling house and then trying to get it off with out catching the Outrigger wheels in the front it was very interesting whenever it happen and when it did the lift would stay there a long time!

The Fork trucks for battery power sure did have guts and lifted whatever we needed, including the 337 Gal Experimental Whiskey Barrels onto the piles.
Dave Z
__________________________________________________ _____
It Seems All The Nicest people Drink Old Hickory
America's Most Magnificent Bourbon
__________________________________________________ ______

[dave ziegler]

Here are a couple of Shots I took of the Fire pumping station going down toward the River I revisited it on Friday walking around. The Building Looks like a bunker and there is no gate door into it. I climbed over the wall but both times I checked this place out I see no way but climbing in over the wall my guess is where the hole in the fence is where there was a small door at one time to climb in.

The Old Engine looks like its ready to run and sits waiting to run but will never again. When I worked here I do not remember this pump to the river I think it was built later and since there are no tanks in the fenced in cement Pad which is giant I figure that was going to be the next step and never got done becuase they closed. I have a paper I found that talks about this set up and I am going to read it and maybe post it one of these days!
Dave Z
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Kinsey The Unhurried Whiskey
For Unhurried Moments
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[dave ziegler]

There is one thing I will never understand and that is why didn't HH put sprinker systems in their warehouses years before the fire there? Think of how much less the lose would have been as sprinklers would have added water to the fire and most likely it would not have spread down the hill like it did and burned everything.

When Publicker bought Kinsey in 1940 they sprinkled everything even the old 1892 Warehouses A & B built by Jacob Kinsey every Building had sprinklers and and large Mains to bring plenty of water to fight fires and even a few years before they closed they added the Fire pumping station pictured before this page.

It was expensive when they did it but the fact that there was never Any Fire at Kinsey or even almost shows how smart a move it was and to think all that Good Whiskey burned up at HH is a sad thing. Continental was way ahead on things in those days and I can remember other Distillers coming to visit and look the Plant over for that reason.
Dave Z
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It Seems All The Nicest People Drink Old Hickory
America's Most magnificent Bourbon
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[mozilla]

Dave,
how do we know for sure that HH was not up to date on sprinklers?
I seem to remember that the fire started in a warehouse and the burning whisky ran downhill catching other buildings and the creek on fire. If the rest of the fires, other than the originating fire, were started on the outside of the buildings...then not much a sprinkler inside the building will do for it.

[dave ziegler]

From what I read in the News papers they had No sprinker systems at all in the warehouses and that is why it went so out of control as they all caught and the Whiskey as the Paper stated ran down the hill catching everything on fire.
That is where I based my writting if they did have them then the system just failed but from all I read on line in papers that was the route cause for so much damage. Here at work we do what we call route causes when we investigate accidents!
Dave Z
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Kinsey The Unhurried Whiskey For Unhurried Moments
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[mozilla]

Tough situation for HH, I am sure. It does seem odd that a distillery wouldn't have some sort of fire suppression system?

[dave ziegler]

Not being from Ky I do not know but I would think that most if not all of the Distillerys there back in the Kinsey days would have had their own fire truck and fire dept. I when I was walking in Kinsey Saturday I was amazed at all the old Fire Extingusters there are still around the Plant.

There are dozens and dozens of them all types and alot of times the Kids bring them out and set them on the road in the Plant for fun I guess.

Remebering back when we cut the racks that was a time where we really had to be on Fire watch! Every one of the buildings had whiskey that had soaked in the cement floors through the years and The Fire Chief Calvin Roberts and Harry Martin his asst Chief would stand at the ready as Pearsol Pine Contractors cut the racks up and we in the yard gang removed and hauled them down to the Steer Pens to store them.

Thankfully the company kept everything in hand and there were NO Fires and all the racks were removed, which in many ways led to the ruin of the Plant as the stacking of Barrels just was not as good as racking them and the leaking was really Bad. Also it made the 2nd and 3rd floors really harder as you had to send up all the 50 / 48 gal barrels in the barrel elevator then stack them which took longer then just racking them up there.
Dave Z
--------------------------------------------------------
It Seems All The Nicest people Drink Old Hickory
America's Most magnificent Bourbon
--------------------------------------------------------