Texas
75 years ago, Texas City Disaster devastated a community in the deadliest US industrial accident ever
EDITOR’S NOTE: This text was written by former staffer Susan Carroll and was initially revealed in 2016. Saturday marks the seventy fifth anniversary of the 1947 Texas Metropolis Catastrophe, the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. historical past. To honor the 581 victims, a memorial service will probably be held at 9 a.m. on Saturday April 16 at Memorial Park in Texas Metropolis. The ceremony will transfer to Doyle Conference Middle within the occasion of rain.
They ate breakfast and gave their 6-month-old son, Kent, a bottle in his crib. Then they went exterior to look at smoke rise from the French freighter SS Grandcamp docked within the city’s port, alongside the west shore of Galveston Bay.
Fred Jr.’s father, Fred Sr., labored on the Monsanto Chemical Co., about 300 toes from the docks.
The couple and Fred Jr.’s mom received into their Oldsmobile with Kent and headed towards the orange smoke.
They have been a couple of soccer subject away when the ship, carrying ammonium nitrate, exploded.
“Fred,” Yvonne Atwood remembers her mother-in-law saying, “begin this automotive and get us away from right here.”
The Houston Chronicle described the devastation in Texas Metropolis, 40 miles south of Houston, within the subsequent day’s version: “The wartime increase city of Texas Metropolis lay in warlike devastation Thursday.”
The demise toll finally reached 576, together with the lacking. All however one member of the Texas Metropolis Hearth Division died.
The Texas Division of Public Security counts it because the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. historical past.
The explosion despatched a fireball into the sky, shrapnel throughout city and broken or destroyed greater than 1,000 buildings.
“A younger mom, wounded and with blood streaming down her face, roamed the streets, clutching a small child in her arms,” the Chronicle article mentioned. “The child was lifeless. The mom didn’t appear to comprehend it, for she violently fought off all makes an attempt to take the newborn from her.”
Houston Chronicle entrance web page – April 20, 1947 – part 1, web page 1
The blast blew out Fred Jr.’s automotive window and dented the roof. Kent received a sliver of glass behind his head, recalled Yvonne Atwood, now 90.
The household drove again to their residence on Seventh Avenue, the place home windows had damaged out, Yvonne Atwood mentioned. An enormous piece of glass was in Kent’s crib.
Jewel Turner, 90, remembers driving via downtown along with her uncle and daughter that day and seeing ambulances and “lifeless our bodies in all places.”
“It was identical to charcoal, identical to it had burned up,” she mentioned. “We actually thought it was the final. We thought it was Judgment Day.”
Jewel Turner, who survived the 1947 Texas Metropolis Catastrophe, in her residence Monday, June 6, 2016 in Texas Metropolis. ( Michael Ciaglo / Houston Chronicle )
Fred Jr. regarded for his father at clinics and first assist stations, however could not discover him.
The explosion ignited a fireplace on the SS Excessive Flyer, one other ship loaded with ammonium nitrate, used to make dynamite and fertilizer. Practically everybody was evacuated, and the Flyer was towed about 100 toes from the docks earlier than it exploded.
Later that day, Texas Metropolis officers opened the doorways of the Central Excessive College gymnasium, the place 189 our bodies have been specified by six lengthy rows, and “bade Texas Citians to enter and start the heart-rendering job of placing a reputation to the anonymous ones,” the newspaper reported.
The Chronicle featured a photograph of a younger mom crying and being supported by two males as she walked out of the health club after figuring out her husband. “Oh, God, how can I inform my child,” the newspaper quoted her as crying.
Fred Jr. discovered his father, who had been on the pier when the ship exploded.
“It blew all his garments off besides his belt and his pocket watch,” mentioned Yvonne Atwood.
Two days after the blast, greater than 1,000 folks attended a memorial service on the gymnasium. Assist for Texas Metropolis poured in from throughout the nation. Celebrities, together with Frank Sinatra and Jack Benny, carried out in fundraisers.
The Coast Guard opened an inquiry into the blast. Officers spent months attempting to determine all of the our bodies. The newspaper carried descriptions of the belongings discovered together with the stays: “Physique 343, fragment blue-grey shirt, Herringbone weave, fragments of blue overalls, tan leather-based jacket and white ribbed undershirt.”
“Physique 391, man’s marriage ceremony ring, plain yellow-gold band, belt buckle and screw-type roofing nail.”
Texas Metropolis explosion, April 1947. Photograph offered by Story Sloane III
04/16/1947 – Longshoreman G.A. Trusky smokes a cigarette, tries to recuperate from combating fireplace ensuing from the explosion on the Grandchamp in Texas Metropolis. Caroline Valenta / Houston Publish 1947 – Texas Metropolis Catastrophe – The pressure of the SS Grandcamp explosion, coupled with flying particles produced by the blast, left this scene of destruction. A surge of water – a tidal wave – pushed from the harbor added to the harm. Jerry Maze / Houston Publish
Houston Chronicle entrance web page – April 19, 1947 – part 1, web page 1.
Houston Chronicle entrance web page – April 18, 1947 – part 1, web page 1
Houston Chronicle entrance web page – April 17, 1947 – part 1, web page 1.
Houston Chronicle entrance web page – April 30, 1947 – part 1, web page 1.
In June 1947, the 63 our bodies that remained unidentified have been buried in a metropolis park throughout a mass funeral service.
The accident prompted greater than 3,000 lawsuits in opposition to the federal authorities, as a result of the ammonium nitrate got here from U.S. ordnance vegetation. Congress resolved the lawsuits in 1955 by passing a particular act that settled all claims for $16.5 million.
The accident additionally resulted in new laws for the manufacturing and transport of chemical substances. The principles required specialised containers for ammonium nitrate and prohibited its storage close to different reactive substances.
Nonetheless, 69 years later, the U.S. authorities is grappling with ammonium nitrate regulation.
Security advocates referred to as for the Environmental Safety Company so as to add it to its listing of harmful chemical substances that require firms to take larger security measures after an explosion in West, Texas, in 2013 killed 15 folks and injured 160.
However the company didn’t add ammonium nitrate when it launched proposed reforms earlier this yr.
Turner, who was 19 when the SS Grandcamp exploded, mentioned she drives previous the memorial for the unidentified victims of the catastrophe as soon as every week, and it at all times brings again recollections.
She remembers being struck by the fantastic thing about the smoke earlier than the explosion.
“It was so many fairly colours,” she mentioned. “You simply could not describe it.”
She remembers holding her 8-month-old daughter as she surveyed the charred stays of downtown.
“It was a horrible sight. Individuals screaming, packing little infants. They did not know the place to go,” she mentioned. “It was simply turmoil.”
She nonetheless thinks about it each day, she mentioned.
“You lay there and take into consideration how good God was to deliver you thru it,” she mentioned. “It might have killed me, too.”
Yvonne Atwood mentioned Fred Jr., who labored in a Texas Metropolis refinery most of his life, died of most cancers in 2006.
He was buried in Hitchcock, in the identical cemetery as his father.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jewel Turner handed away in 2017, and Yvonne Atwood handed away in 2021, per obituaries within the Galveston County Every day Information.