At 1430 hours on August 14, 2003, a fire was reported at the Jim Beam Warehouse facility at 999 Withrow Court in Bardstown, Nelson County, Kentucky. The fire was reportedly caused by a lightning strike. The seven-story structure housed nearly nineteen thousand barrels (about 800,000 gallons) of two-year-old bourbon whiskey (ethyl alcohol). The fire caused a release of bourbon that impacted surface water and natural resources for a distance of over 50 miles downstream. The OSC and the EPA Region 4 Superfund Technical Assistance and Response Team (START) mobilized to the incident on August 4, 2003, and monitored response actions at the scene until August 12, 2003.
