BARDSTOWN — Tyree Matthews stands in his outdoor, searching toward the sky.

It’s a warm and humid afternoon within the self-proclaimed “Bourbon Capital of the arena,” however the shirtless seventy one-yr-vintage is not getting much of a tan. Much less than 10 yards from his lower back fence, a five-story warehouse blocks the sun. The large black dice holds hundreds of barrels of bourbon made with the aid of the Barton 1792 Distillery.

Matthews does not drink bourbon, however it still should kill him.

A comparable Barton 1792 warehouse about six hundred yards away collapsed in two degrees in June and July, sending extra than four,500 lots of wood and flammable booze — identical to 9 completely-loaded Boeing 747s — crashing to the ground.

Nobody turned into hurt in the crumble — no person lived nearby — but it began Matthews considering the consequences of 18,000 barrels of whiskey touchdown on his neon-blue ranch-style domestic.

“I lost self belief,” Matthews stated. “i've by no means even concept about it earlier than, however it’s very risky.”

Bourbon is extra than just a drink in Kentucky. It is woven into the records and the identification of the commonwealth, which produces 95 percent of the kingdom's bourbon. Approximately 50 distilleries, some older than Kentucky itself, are a large a part of the financial system — an $eight.Five billion enterprise supplying 17,500 jobs in a vicinity that by no means seems to have enough of them.

Nobody questions the importance of bourbon in Kentucky. Nor do they ask many questions about the safety of the old distilleries and barrel warehouses that dot the rolling green hills. Not even when a warehouse disintegrate sends a tsunami of fish-killing alcohol into close by streams or while lightning moves flip them into tornadoes of flame.

Inside the aftermath of the warehouse fall apart, the Courier journal determined that buildings wherein Kentucky distilleries age their merchandise can cross decades without unbiased inspections for structural weaknesses or protection issues. And local officials who proudly profess love for the local enterprise are at a loss whilst asked if the producing procedure poses a risk to public fitness and safety.

Take, for example, the failed Barton 1792 warehouse. Bardstown and Nelson County officers can't say for positive, however they suppose it turned into constructed inside the “Forties or Nineteen Fifties.” They haven't any record of its production nor something to expose it was ever inspected. As some distance as they may be worried, if it wasn't newly built or being up to date, it didn't need to be.

It is ordinary in Kentucky.

Whilst alcohol manufacturing is intently monitored by means of state and federal regulators, they awareness on tracking income, accumulating taxes and imposing meals and drug regulations. They do not check if a seven-story warehouse is structurally sound or might be susceptible to bursting into flames.

That leaves the oldsters in Maple Hill, wherein Matthews and dozens of others stay in homes that snug up to the vintage distillery, uncertain approximately the places they call domestic.

“earlier than i was now not a piece frightened,” Matthews stated. “I virtually wasn’t. Now that (the warehouse) fell, I’m worried. I stay so close to it. Why wouldn’t we be?”

huge bourbon, huge chance

The city of Bardstown, with thirteen,000 citizens and at the least six most important distilleries that include huge names like Jim Beam, Barton 1792 and Heaven Hill, is the "Bourbon Capital of the world." In fact, the yearly Kentucky Bourbon festival trademarked that word to apply best to the town 40 miles from Louisville.

That much bourbon in one vicinity is lots of purpose to elevate a glass, but it must also purpose subject. Every body is aware of a chemical plant poses a hazard, but no longer all and sundry realizes industrial production of distilled spirits may be simply as dangerous whilst some thing goes incorrect.

Just closing November, for example, employees of the B.J. Hooker vodka distillery in Texas had been severely burned while a spark from a energy device precipitated alcohol fumes in a warehouse to explode.

Accidents like which are rare in Kentucky, but the danger is real.

In 1996, almost 4.Eight million gallons of whiskey in seven large warehouses stuck fire while the Heaven Hill distillery burned. Torrents of burning booze flowed down roads and 500-pound barrels exploded into the air like mortar shells. It could have been worse. No accidents were stated, and extra than a hundred firefighters were capable of preserve the blaze from igniting 37 different warehouses.

not one of the warehouses have been equipped with automatic sprinklers and the reason of the fireplace turned into never decided, according to a 2009 document from the Loss Prevention Symposium. The distillery become now not rebuilt at the site, that is now used handiest for bourbon growing older and storage.

"now not plenty has modified" for the reason that fire, Heaven Hill spokesman Josh Hafer said. "all the warehouses are nonetheless made by the same enterprise."

that would be Bardstown-based Buzick construction, in which president Donald Blincoe estimates his employer has built at least a hundred barrel warehouses in Kentucky and Tennessee.

Blincoe said the fire caused adjustments in Kentucky constructing code.

This year, as an instance, Heaven Hill is building a new $5 million warehouse. At seven testimonies, the timber-body shape will appear to be its different, an awful lot older warehouses, however it will have hearth suppression sprinklers and contemporary electrical, heating and cooling systems. It, like every new barrel warehouses, may be surrounded through ditches and berms to contain spills.

But even basic safety measures like berms aren't required for infinite warehouses constructed earlier than the 1996 fireplace, Logan Spaulding, Nelson County's head of code enforcement, said.