PORT ANGELES — Peter Capos was working as the head bartender in the cocktail lounge of Haguewood’s Restaurant almost 42 years ago when the bar area exploded around him.

“The cocktail lounge just blew up,” Capos told a newspaper reporter Sept. 30, 1971, after an underground gasline just outside the restaurant exploded.

Capos, 58 at the time, had just turned away from the bar when the blast shook the Olympus Hotel near the corner of Laurel and Front streets, destroying the restaurant that occupied the first floor and injuring 37 people, including Capos.

“I was in World War II, and I never heard something like that,” Capos said in a June 1 interview from his Port Angeles home.

The damage to the hotel wrought by the blast forced the demolition of the building and made restaurant owner Sam Haguewood move his place farther east, where the Port Angeles CrabHouse Restaurant now sits at 221 N. Lincoln St.

Despite the impact the blast had on the face of downtown Port Angeles, Capos said, the explosion has not had lasting effects on him.

“It’s all past. I don’t even think about it,” Capos said.

“We were just lucky to survive.”

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Reporter Jeremy Schwartz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jschwartz@peninsuladailynews.com.