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Pastor counts blessings – and minutes – following devastating explosion
October 31, 2024
Five minutes.
Father Bernard Starman thinks about what could have happened if an Oct. 7 explosion at St. Patrick Parish in O’Neill happened five minutes later than it did.
The blast occurred at 5:55 a.m., a time that became frozen on damaged clocks. About 50 minutes earlier, natural gas began filling a parish center after a vehicle traveling at a low speed hit a line that pumped the gas into the building.
The ensuing explosion destroyed the parish center and damaged surrounding structures, but the parish’s pastor said it could have been much worse.
Father Starman learned that neighbors across the street would have been awake, sitting on a couch, drinking coffee and watching the news in front of their picture window instead of being a room or two farther away from the explosion and remaining uninjured.
He said two women who regularly walk together would have passed by the parish center about 6 a.m. But by the grace of God, one of the women decided to sleep in that day, and the other decided it was too cold to be outside.
The explosion would have been even worse if it occurred a half hour or hour later, he said. Employees at the hospital across the street, Avera St. Anthony’s, would have been arriving for a shift change.
Two hours later, parish employees would have arrived for work at the parish center, and parents would have been dropping off students at the neighboring St. Mary elementary and high schools. By that time, the energy from the gas leak would have accumulated enough to level three city blocks, wiping out the hospital, the schools, St. Patrick Church, homes and even part of the courthouse in O’Neill, Father Starman said.
Instead, just one person was reported injured after the explosion, the 58-year-old driver of the vehicle that hit the gas line. He had been heading to Avera St. Anthony’s for dialysis treatment, authorities have said.
A fire and rescue official said the man was transported to Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha but has since been back in O’Neill recovering.
Just this week the hospital reopened its emergency room and inpatient care services after sustaining significant damage from the explosion.
Both St. Mary schools were damaged but will eventually reopen, said Father Starman, president of the schools and pastor of other parishes in the Catholic Parishes of Western Holt and Boyd Counties. In the meantime, classes are being held at three different locations in O’Neill.
Students in second through sixth grade have classes at Faith Community Church, while students in pre-kindergarten through first grade have relocated to a former public school administration building now owned by Holt County. Space was made available at Northeast Community College for St. Mary students in grades seven through 12.
Parish staff members, whose parish center offices were annihilated, operate out of a former law office building.
The community of O’Neill has been generous, Father Starman said, offering much of the temporary quarters for the school and parish for free.
Prayers, help and donations started almost immediately. The evening of the explosion, people filled St. Patrick Church to pray a rosary.
“It was just packed,” Father Starman said, “like an Easter Sunday or Christmas Eve Mass.”
Public and parochial schools in northeast Nebraska have held fundraisers, beginning with Archangels Catholic High School in Humphrey, which within a day had a split-the-pot drawing at a volleyball game.
Other Church communities have helped, too, including parishes in South Dakota that have been taking up second collections each weekend since the explosion.
Father Starman and others at St. Patrick know they’re blessed despite the parish’s setbacks and ongoing inconveniences.
“We’ve got lots of reasons,” he said, “to believe in miracles and divine protection.”

After an explosion at St. Patrick Parish in O’Neill, volunteers help clean the playground at nearby St. Mary School. COURTESY PHOTO

The site where the parish center stood has been cleared. COURTESY PHOTO

The parish center is shown after the explosion. COURTESY PHOTO

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