Texas City Disaster

On April 16th, 1947, the SS Grandcamp, loaded with 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate, caught fire and exploded in Texas City, causing the deadliest industrial accident in US history and one of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever. The explosion, fueled by ammonium nitrate and subsequent fires, destroyed much of Texas City's port, killing over 500 people and injuring thousands. The disaster led to significant changes in safety regulations for handling and transporting hazardous chemicals. This episode of "History's a Disaster" explores the events leading up to the explosion, the immediate devastation, and its long-term impacts on industry and disaster management.

00:00 The Deadliest Industrial Accident in US History
00:56 Texas City: A Petrochemical Hub
01:59 The SS Grand Camp: A Ticking Time Bomb
02:51 The Fire Begins
06:56 The Explosion and Immediate Aftermath
15:00 The High Flyer Disaster
17:13 The Aftermath and Relief Efforts
22:10 Legal Battles and Safety Reforms
23:29 Conclusion and Reflections

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Transcript

 On April 16th, 1947, while a French ship, the SS Grand Camp was being loaded with fertilizer at the port in Texas City, a fire broke out in the hold causing 2300 tons of ammonium night. Trait to explode the explosion would cause the deadliest industrial accident in US History, as well as being one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.

So what happened? I'm Andrew, and this is History's a Disaster.

So this week we are diving into another ship explosion that destroyed most of a city. I know, I know we just did one last week, but I figured, hey, we blew up Canada time to blow up Texas and in Texas. Texas City was a pretty busy port and the Gulf of Mexico on Galveston Bay in 1946, they had over 13 million tons of cargo moved through the port.

And a lot of that cargo being oil and gasoline. It was at the time the fourth largest port in Texas and has since grown in size. It would be a billion dollar city of oil refineries, oil tank farms, and chemical plants. It was the most lucrative petrochemical center in the world. All thanks to the Rockefellers Howard Hughes.

And of course, members of the Bush family, BP also would have one of its most profitable refineries at the port. But before this, during World War ii, it was a heavily guarded defense industry town churning out gas for the militaries growing needs. But when the war ended, Texas City just kept chugging along with civilians now in control of the town.

The SS Grant Camp was a former World War II Liberty ship given to France, and was now a French merchant ship owned by the French line, and was in port to pick up a load of fertilizer destined for farms in Europe. That fertilizer being ammonium nitrate, the same shit used in the Oklahoma City bombing.

The shit was made in Nebraska and Iowa, then shipped by train down to Texas to get shit out. It was packed in paper bags like concrete and kept in a hot environment, which sounds smart. Let's put this explosive shit in a paper bag and keep it warm. They knew this stuff was explosive. They'd been using it in explosives for years, so it's not like this was new information.

Anyways, they were loading up the grand camp at roughly 8:00 AM with fertilizer. They had been loading the ship for the last few days with 2300 tons already loaded and filling holds two and four. A few of the dock workers commented on how warm the bags were, and they were just throwing it into the hold without a care in the world.

Guessing it wasn't common knowledge amongst normal people, how dangerous this shit was,

as they were just tossing it in. Some of the bags breathed, spilling fertilizer over the hold. Eventually they started to smell smoke. So they started removing a few bags and they could see a fire had started 10 to 15 feet down in the hold, and the cause of the fire has never been determined. There's a few theories out there ranging from the warm paper, mixing in with other cargo and a igniting or possibly a discarded cigarette dropped in the hole the night before that caused the cargo to smolder all night.

Now, the cigarette theory has since been disproven, but. Either way, no matter what the cause is, it was definitely human error. Someone fucked up somewhere and the fuckups would just continue on. They first tried to put out the fire with a few buckets of water and a fire extinguisher. When that didn't work, they went to get a hose, but the captain of the ship, captain Charles Deon.

Shut that idea down real quick. He did not want the chance ruining the rest of the cargo with water, so he ordered the holds to be sealed and pump hot steam in, in hopes of smothering the flames, which was apparently a firefighting technique used when you wanted to save cargo. But surprisingly, adding hot steam did not exactly have the effect he wanted.

The heat and the moisture from the steam did not mix well with the ammonium nitrate and just made things worse. The fire would just get bigger at eight 30. The pressure in the sealed hold blew the hatches off, pouring an oranges smoke into the air at 9:00 AM with the fire now shooting outta the holes of the ship.

The captain ordered it to be abandoned and Texas City's volunteer fire department was called in. They showed up with all four of the department's fire trucks to combat the plays raging across the ship. And of course, with the orange smoke pouring into the air, it attracted a crowd growing numbers of spectators, including school children showed up to watch the ship burn.

Shift fires were common and usually quickly put out, so no one was that concerned. The crowds watched as the fire department rushed into the smoke dragging their hoses with them. However, as they turned the hoses to the flames, the heat was so intense that it vaporized the water as it came out of the hose.

So their efforts to fight the fire were completely futile.

Pressure inside the ship was growing as the metal of the ship started to groan. Sailors are yelling warnings from the burning deck as they scrambled over the sides in a desperate bid to reach safety. The growing crowd watches in awe as two light planes fly overhead in the smoke and some near the ship.

Watching horror as deck planks bend Andy form from the pressure within rusted nails would shoot out of the ship in a long series of cracking noises. The water below the grand camp bubbled and boiled beneath the ship. At 9:12 AM an explosion ripped through the ship

as the grand camp disintegrated molten chunks of the 14 million pound ship shoot up and across the city and Galveston Bay, the tons of Cecile Twine in its cargo hold. Ignite into flaming coils as they're shot screaming into the sky before raining down on the crowd. Multiple heavy pieces of the grand camp started smashing into the ground.

The 40,000 pound deck was shot more than a half mile away. More than 200 people near the port were killed. Including every Texas city firefighter who were vaporized in the blast. Their fire trucks were torn to shreds. All that remained of them was twisted metal. Metal debris turned red hot burning ropes and glass shards from the grand camp tore through the gathered crowds, debris, and other cargo was launched thousands of feet into the air.

The force of the blast struck the two planes flying overhead. The wings are ripped off both planes, sending them into a corkscrew dive into the nearby fields, killing everyone on board. Pieces of the hall slam into the wakes of shrimp boats in Galveston Bay, almost sinking some of them. Others are plunging into the collapsed roofs of the shacks in Al Barrio and the bottom immediately setting the interiors.

Of these homes a blaze, a piece of the bow crashes into the fifth floor of the Monsanto plant. The propeller shaft tunnels up from the bottom of the ship through the number four hold and travels over 600 yards and grinds to a halt at the feet of a spectator who is now shitting their pants blackened by fire.

The 3000 pound anchor from the grand camp was flying through the air. It would fall out of the black smoke. Two miles away and carve a 10 foot deep crater on the grounds of the Pan-American Oil Refinery. A one and a half ton drill stem was tossed from the ship for 13,000 feet and barely missed the pressurized spheres of flammable butane and isobutane before it stamps the roof and slams into the ground floor of Amicus Number 5 61 oil tank.

Warehouse zero being nearest, the explosion vanishes. The southwestern sugar and molasses factory is incinerated along the three waterfront slips. All the oil and gasoline lines are rupturing as each line fractures and melts. A column of liquid, 15 to 20 feet high, blast out and instantly catches fire.

More than 4,000 feet away. Balls of fire. The size of hot air balloons are shooting out of the Sid Richardson Refining company's oil tanks. A 3000 pound, 30 foot long oil well pipe was launched two miles. Where it dove and incinerated an oil storage tank owned by Amaco oil tanks are exploding on the property of Republic Refining.

Six tanks erupt and are burning at stone oil refinery. The Texas City petrochemical complex now has a total of over 20 oil storage tanks blazing with fire. When the ship exploded, the entire basin was scooped out and a 20 foot high tidal wave. Smashes over the north slip. The boiling hot water reached 150 foot inland plowing over the docks and toward the people stretched along the waterfront.

The tidal wave is filled with diesel fuel, hydrochloric acid, ammonium nitrate, and styrene and cresting. At the top of the wave is a 150 foot long, 30 ton hydrochloric acid barge named the Longhorn two. When the wave slams down, it slaps the block long barge 250 feet inland on top of a no parking sign, and on top of the twisted smoking skeleton of a fire truck.

As the wave slams on top of a cafe, the weight of the tidal wave crushes the roof. The walls crack and splinter and fly apart. The deep water hits all the people inside. Knocking them from their feet, and as it recedes, it sucks them out of the building, towards the fire, down towards the destroyed waterfront where they would not be seen again.

32 of the sailors who brought the grand camp to port, including Captain Charles de Gibon. We're dragged into the wharf and we're never seen again on the scorched grounds of Monsanto, 451 of their employees have reported to work. Each of the plant's buildings is on fire, crumbling or flattened into a glowing rubble.

There's a sharp, accurate smell of acid and petrochemicals. Spouts of benzo, ethyl, benzene, and propane are shooting out of ruptured pipes. Outside the Monsanto plant, a dozen horribly burned men are wading through twin pools of chemical laced water coated with dancing fire. The dead bodies of 72 workers are scattered over Monsanto's 40 acres, and for the time being 82 other full-time employees have finished somewhere in Texas City.

Somewhere inside the crumbled masonry and steel girders that are bent and twisted, there's a toxic smell everywhere from the petrochemicals, the toy lane, the styrene leaking, and a burning towers and rail cars. Dozens of cars are on fire stacked on top of each other, like firewood on the sidewalk. There are streams of blood around the front doors of the Danforth Clinic.

The chemical smell is dizzying, overpowering. People are pressing wet rags to their faces. Trying to remember what soldiers in World War I had done during the mustard gas attacks, a local jewelry store has been shoved off its foundation and dumped its contents into the street. Opportunistic looters took the time to fill their pockets with diamond rings.

The smoke is pouring over Al Barrio in the bottom. These neighborhoods being the closest to the north slip row after row of these shittily built homes are flattened and destroyed in the blast. City Hall looks like something from a war zone. Windows are cracked. Doors are at an odd angle. Desk filing cabinets and chairs are knocked to the floor.

People some being carried. Some being pushed in wheelbarrows. And some clinging to the hoods of cars. Approached city hall from the south, even with the lower end of City Hall, looking as if it had been hit by a missile, there was no place else for them to go. Wounded, people crawled up on the sidewalk. The grass matted by thick splotches of blood.

Major wounds are everywhere with one woman. Desperately trying to put her eye back in its socket. The explosion could be heard more than 150 miles away. In Galveston 10 miles away, people are knocked off their feet 25 miles away. In Freeport windows are shattered in Houston over 40 miles away. Windows are knocked out and shattered a hundred miles away.

In Port Arthur dishes are knocked over and windows rattled. By that afternoon, Texas City thought the worst was over. Things couldn't possibly get worse. Then smokes started pouring out of the SS High flyer when they found out it had a load of another thousand tons of ammonium nitrate and 2000 tons of sulfur.

They've made the desperate attempt to try to tow it away. They hooked tugboats up to pull it out into the Gulf. However, during the grand camp explosion, the high flyer was ripped from its moorings where it was undergoing repairs. It was sent slamming into another ship. The SS Wilson B Keen, the side of the high flyer was damaged in the collision.

Its hatch covers were blown open and the high flyer would barely budge when they tried to pull it. They got it to move 50 feet before it stopped and would not move another itch, so they gave up trying and got the fuck out of there, and at 1:10 AM on the 17th. Only 16 hours since the grand camp exploded, the high flyer blew up, sending flames shooting 3000 feet in the air.

Another shockwave smashed through the ruined waterfront and new fires were starting to spread. The tail shaft of the high flyer landed like a javelin in the mud of Rattlesnake Island. Four of the gigantic 80,000 barrel humble oil tanks. We're ignited. A steel union carbide tank dissolves into a spreading metallic lake more than a mile away.

The number 60 tank at Republic Oil blows up a one ton turbine hits republic, knocking into the giant cooling towers at stone oil. A 2,500 barrel tank that lit through the first blast now lit up. Its domed roof had been launched like a saucer 350 feet away, but because there are so few people left alive on the immediate waterfront because so many had evacuated and fled towards Houston and Galveston, only two men are reported killed in the high flyer blast.

Firefighters and other first responders would have to come in from Galveston and other surrounding cities to try to fight the growing fire at the docks. The Red Cross was brought in to assist in the response. More than 2000 doctors and nurses came pouring into town to set up aid stations and makeshift hospitals, and most of the hospitals had no electricity.

All the windows were gone. The floor was littered with glass, debris and blood. These hospitals were quickly overfilled and medical students would have to step up to fill in for the lack of qualified medical personnel. The morgue was quickly overloaded. Temporary morgues would have to be set up around town to hold all the dead.

A few buses would be able to make it out of Texas City through the maze of abandoned vehicles and debris to take wounded to Galveston for treatment. While they were evacuating the city, the fire spread through the streets reaching the crude oil tanks, which would burst into flames. And spread the fire even further to surrounding buildings.

Firefighting efforts in the city would be slowed down as they started to run outta water. They had to be frustrated being right near the waterfront and all that water in the bay, and they could not risk using a single drop of it. Ordinarily, they would drop hoses in and pump water directly from the bay, however, between the debris from the exploded ships in the bay.

And leaking oil and chemical tanks. The bay was pretty polluted, not a firefighter, so this is just a guess. But spraying oil and random ass chemicals onto a fire, probably not a good idea. Plus, I'm sure sucking up random bits of metal and debris would play hell with their equipment. The fires burned for days and would continue to burn until they ran out of fuel, or the firefighters were able to.

Who extinguish them. An estimated 1.5 million barrels of oil would go up in flames at an estimated value of $500 million in 1947, and they would be over 6.6 billion today. The smoke from the tanks could be seen from 30 miles away, and Galveston would not go unscathed either the burning oil sink clouds a tar and smoot up in the air that would hit.

Galveston leaving an oily residue everywhere.

By the time it was over, more than 500 people were killed. At least another 100 listed as missing and over 3,500 injured. So that's over 4,000 casualties in a city with a population of 16,000. More than 1500 houses were destroyed leaving over 2000 survivors homeless. And those numbers aren't exact. The exact number of casualties will never be actually known.

Given there was any number of people from outside Texas City in the area, from sailors, the people just passing through town. The explosion had caused over 600 million in damages to the city. The explosion gained national attention and support came pouring in from across the country. Mayor Curtis Rehan started the Texas City Relief Fund to handle all the donations coming in.

Crime Boss Sam Macio, who ran the organized crime rackets in Galveston, hosted the largest fundraising effort for both the city and victims. Nothing like a little philanthropy to show the mob was just a bunch of nice guys after all, and he threw a huge benefit on a private island and flew in famous entertainers like Frank Sinatra and Ian Sheridan.

They had to have been a hell of a party. A mob party on a private island? Hell yeah. The Texas City Relief Fund would take in over a million in donations. 15 million adjusted to today's money. Fire insurance payouts were nearly 4 million and it's 55.7. In today's economy. Major companies hit by the explosion, doubled down on Texas City.

Not only were they going to rebuild, but some of them were going to expand their operations and more than a few of them also announced policies that they were going to keep all of their workers on staff and use them to help rebuild. Industrial reconstruction costs would hit over $100 million. Texas City would go on to blame the US government for the tragedy.

Citing. They never told them how dangerous ammonium nitrate was, and had they known this could have been avoided, they won their case in court. However, the government appealed and the US Supreme Court sided with the government. Surprising, right? They said the government did nothing wrong. So the case got thrown out, but there was a feeling that the government should do something.

So in 1955, Congress passed an act that gave the citizens of Texas City $16.5 million, and I'm sure that made everything all right. After this, several changes would be put into place. The US government put new rules in place for the packing, loading and shipping of dangerous chemicals. Anything with ammonium nitrate had to have a special warning label on them.

Multiple port cities would go on to refuse any ship carrying ammonium nitrate from entering their ports, cities across the country. Took a more serious look at what happened and started to work on putting their own disaster plans into place.

And that was the Texas City disaster. Thanks for listening, and if you enjoyed the show, please consider leaving a rating or review on your Apple Choice and you can reach the show at Histories and disaster@gmail.com. Or follow it on social media at history is a disaster on Facebook, Instagram, and a few others and share the episode because sharing is caring and if there was more caring in the world, maybe history wouldn't be a disaster.

Thanks and goodbye.