Two explosions tore through Brent Industries in Toledo just before 5 a.m. on Tuesday, August 18, and by mid-morning two workers were dead and half the building had collapsed. Black smoke rose high enough that people across the city could see it. Over the radio, a dispatcher told the first crews something you almost never hear in a routine call: the building had blown up.
The blasts came during a shift change, the exact window when one crew is clocking out and the next is clocking in. That timing put a dozen people inside a plant filled with tanks of flammable cleaning solvent. Most walked away with cuts and scrapes. Two of them did not walk away at all.
The two workers who did not make it out
Fire crews found the bodies of two employees, a man and a woman, inside the smoldering building after the flames were knocked down. For hours they were simply listed as unaccounted for. Fire Chief Allison Armstrong said the two had been seen inside before the explosion, and officials could not immediately say whether they were hurt or just not answering their phones.
Family members identified one of them as Mary Allen, 64. Her relatives told a local station she was a mother and grandmother who loved to fish, loved her job, and was always the first one in for her shift. Her daughter, Lenore Bangura, put it plainly: “My mom was amazing and I’m going to miss her.” The name of the second worker who died had not been released as of Tuesday afternoon.
Two or three other employees were treated for minor injuries. Officials said 12 workers were inside the facility when the first blast hit, so it is close to a miracle that most of them got out at all.
Firefighters walked toward a building full of solvent tanks
The 911 calls started coming in just before 5 a.m. When firefighters reached the 2900 block of South Avenue on the south side of Toledo, the structure was already fully engulfed, throwing flames more than a hundred feet into the air. Then came more explosions after the first one.
One of the first firefighters on scene radioed a warning that the back of the property was “full of chemicals that will ignite and explode violently.” That is the kind of message that tells you exactly how dangerous this scene was for the people running toward it. Crews had to search for missing workers while dealing with hazardous runoff, ruptured tanks, and the real chance of another blast going off next to them.
They largely contained the blaze by 6:15 a.m., but smoke was still pouring out of the wreckage hours later. Aerial images showed nearly the entire roof was gone and the walls had been blown outward. Chief Armstrong said at least half the building collapsed. The fire was still burning late into the morning.
What Brent Industries actually does
If you have never heard of Brent Industries, you are not alone. It is not a household name, but it does a job plenty of factories rely on. The company handles textile reconditioning and industrial recycling, which in plain terms means it cleans dirty industrial fabrics so they can be used again instead of tossed.
Armstrong described the operation bluntly: “They clean items like rags, towels, stuff like that.” The company’s own website says it cleans work gloves, wiping cloths, and other textiles that carry hazardous substances. To scrub that gunk out, it uses mineral spirits, a petroleum-based solvent. Brent Industries was founded in Alabama in 1977 and runs plants in Brent, Alabama and Toledo, Ohio.
The tanks of mineral spirits that toppled over
Officials at the scene confirmed the plant held multiple tanks of mineral spirits. Armstrong said the blast ruptured tanks full of chemicals and knocked them over, which is a big part of why the roof partially caved in and the fire kept feeding itself. Mineral spirits are used for degreasing and cleaning, and they give off vapor that catches fire fast under the wrong conditions.
Investigators had not said what set off the first explosion. Armstrong told reporters there were no preliminary indications of a cause. She did not guess, and neither will we. What is confirmed is that the tanks were there, they ruptured, and the fire that followed took most of the building down with it.
This was not the company’s first deadly explosion
The detail that stops you cold is what happened at the company’s other plant. Brent Industries’ Alabama location had an explosion and fire in 2015 that killed one person. That was not a mystery either. After that blast, federal safety officials determined that flammable vapor from mineral spirits ignited inside an industrial washing machine.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the company for a half-dozen violations after the 2015 death and fined it $27,000. That is the same solvent, the same type of equipment, and the same company now facing a second fatal explosion, this time with two dead instead of one.
The Toledo plant had its own record
The Toledo facility had been flagged before too. Back in 2004, OSHA cited Brent Industries for two serious violations at the Ohio plant. One of them involved failing to protect workers from death or serious harm after they were exposed to a 207-degree steam release from a washing machine.
That is 207 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to scald. Two decades separate that citation from Tuesday’s explosion, and the equipment and processes have surely changed over that time. Still, it paints a picture of a workplace where the machines, the heat, and the solvents have all been points of concern at one time or another.
What investigators are doing now
OSHA said it is investigating the Toledo explosions. The agency gets up to six months to complete that work, and it will not release more information until the investigation wraps up. So the official cause is going to take a while, and anyone promising you an answer sooner is guessing.
State environmental officials were also on the scene watching for any impact from the smoke and runoff. Their air monitors showed no hazardous threat in the air, though authorities still asked people nearby who could see or smell the smoke to keep their windows and doors closed and stay out of the area while crews worked.
A city waking up to a plume of smoke
Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz confirmed the two deaths, and the whole south side of the city felt the response. Fire engines swarmed the block, and thick dark smoke was visible from across Toledo. For anyone driving to work early Tuesday, the sky told the story before the news did.
The people who ran toward that building did not know how many workers were trapped, whether the tanks were done exploding, or what they were breathing in. They went in anyway. That is worth remembering when the investigation drags on for months and the story slides off the front page.
For now, the hardest facts are the simplest ones. Two workers clocked in for an early shift at a plant they knew, one of them a 64-year-old grandmother who liked to fish and always showed up first. Neither of them came home. The rest, the cause, the citations, the responsibility, will be sorted out later. Their families are living with the answer already.
