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The Texas City Disaster of 1947 · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:14
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,
0:18
Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know. It's about to
0:25
Speaker 1: say natural disaster edition, but unnatural disaster edition. Industrial disaster
0:30
Speaker 1: is what they call these human caused. In fact, from
0:33
Speaker 1: what I saw what we're going to talk about today,
0:35
Speaker 1: the main thing we're talking about today is the largest
0:39
Speaker 1: industrial disaster in United States history? Still, oh still, yes,
0:45
Speaker 1: what's seventy almost seventy five years on? Man, sad this
0:50
Speaker 1: is a big one. Yeah, everything about this was really big,
0:53
Speaker 1: but in basically all the wrong ways. Um, We're gonna
0:58
Speaker 1: talk today about a disaster called the Texas City explosion,
1:03
Speaker 1: and sadly you might say which one, because there's been
1:07
Speaker 1: multiple massive explosions in Texas City. One of the reasons
1:11
Speaker 1: why is because Texas City is has made a name
1:14
Speaker 1: for itself as one of the premier petrochemical ports in
1:21
Speaker 1: the United States and indeed possibly the world. I think
1:24
Speaker 1: it was um up until World War Two, it was
1:27
Speaker 1: like the fourth largest port in Texas, But I think
1:30
Speaker 1: since World War Two um, it's grown even more. And
1:33
Speaker 1: I know for a little while there, BP had a
1:36
Speaker 1: refinery that was its most profitable oil refinery in the world,
1:41
Speaker 1: which is really saying something. I mean, that's a big deal.
1:44
Speaker 1: BP is an enormous company with multiple refinery so you know,
1:49
Speaker 1: for the biggest one, the most profitable one to be
1:52
Speaker 1: in Texas City. That kind of put Texas City on
1:54
Speaker 1: the map in some circles. Yeah. So Texas City is
1:58
Speaker 1: above the Gulf of Mexico, and like you said, it's
2:00
Speaker 1: a port town founded in the late eighteen hundreds by
2:04
Speaker 1: some Minnesota hunters and they said, you know what, I
2:07
Speaker 1: think we can set up shop here. I think we
2:10
Speaker 1: can dig up a canal, set up a rail line.
2:12
Speaker 1: We've got some really good deep water, and we could
2:14
Speaker 1: be a good shipping port. I want to know how they, like,
2:17
Speaker 1: what what conversation led to that, Like what hunting trip
2:22
Speaker 1: ends up in you basically building a port town in
2:24
Speaker 1: a city that's about as far away from your home
2:27
Speaker 1: as you can get in the same country. Yeah, I
2:29
Speaker 1: mean there were some real go getters, I guess. Yeah,
2:33
Speaker 1: I guess. So they couldn't just relax and kill animals.
2:38
Speaker 1: Oh god, Uh so that's what happened to Texas City.
2:42
Speaker 1: I mean, that's how it was kind of founded, and
2:44
Speaker 1: it was like think refineries, think warehouses and chemical plants. Uh.
2:50
Speaker 1: World War two comes around in the military, of course
2:53
Speaker 1: as well, will be sort of controlling this area for
2:56
Speaker 1: a while because it's pretty valuable port for US, and
2:59
Speaker 1: we're going to ship munitions in and out of here.
3:02
Speaker 1: World War two comes and goes, and then after the war,
3:05
Speaker 1: about a year and a half after the war, it
3:08
Speaker 1: is run by civilians again. And let's just say that
3:12
Speaker 1: it was a little more of a relaxed scene than
3:16
Speaker 1: it was when the military was running the show. Yeah,
3:18
Speaker 1: they the military ran like a tight ship basically. Um.
3:22
Speaker 1: And yeah, well there's just a big difference between when
3:26
Speaker 1: the military is running a port and when the port's
3:28
Speaker 1: run by just a whole bunch of different private companies,
3:31
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. In Minnesota hunters exactly. So Um.
3:35
Speaker 1: That's not to say it was just some loosey goosey
3:37
Speaker 1: um place or anything like that, but just comparatively speaking. Uh.
3:42
Speaker 1: And one of the one of the other things that
3:44
Speaker 1: Texas City had going against it on the morning of
3:47
Speaker 1: April is that there weren't really a lot of standards
3:52
Speaker 1: and regulations for handling chemicals, and then we didn't have
3:57
Speaker 1: an enormous grasp on just how chemicals worked at that time. Um,
4:03
Speaker 1: and so all of this, all of these things kind
4:06
Speaker 1: of came together is kind of slightly lax oversight and
4:09
Speaker 1: just kind of lack much more relaxed attitude toward cargo
4:14
Speaker 1: and then a lack of awareness about just what kind
4:16
Speaker 1: of dangers different cargoes pose just kind of set things
4:19
Speaker 1: up for to take a bad turn. Yeah, So on
4:23
Speaker 1: the morning of April six, there were three ships docked
4:27
Speaker 1: in the port um. There was most notably the S S.
4:31
Speaker 1: Grand Camp, which was it was a it was a
4:36
Speaker 1: military ship at one point, but I think we gave
4:39
Speaker 1: it to France as like a hey, sorry, Europe is
4:43
Speaker 1: kind of destroyed, why don't you take this ship and
4:46
Speaker 1: just use it for whatever you want to do. And
4:48
Speaker 1: it was converted to a cargo ship, which is which
4:52
Speaker 1: it was on the day of April six, And it
4:54
Speaker 1: was beside the S S. High Flyer, And that was
4:58
Speaker 1: beside the third one named after somebody, what was that one?
5:02
Speaker 1: The Robert Keene or the William Keane. Oh wait, a minute,
5:07
Speaker 1: which one was it? Well, it was the Wilson bee
5:10
Speaker 1: Key even better, right, the Billy Keen as they called it. Yeah,
5:14
Speaker 1: and I believe all three of those were liberty ships, right, Yeah,
5:18
Speaker 1: they were World War two ships and they were I
5:21
Speaker 1: think the SS high Flyer was being fixed at the
5:24
Speaker 1: time but was still loaded down with stuff, as was
5:28
Speaker 1: the Grand Camp. And will sort of detail what was
5:30
Speaker 1: in the cargo because it's all very very key. Yeah,
5:33
Speaker 1: it's really important. So for five days leading up to
5:35
Speaker 1: April sixt m Steve Doors, I think that's how you
5:39
Speaker 1: say it, but basically dock hands. I don't know why
5:41
Speaker 1: you wouldn't just say dock hands, you know, but the
5:44
Speaker 1: Steven Doors, um man, I hope I'm saying that correctly, Chuck.
5:49
Speaker 1: They had loaded up the Grand Camp with dred tons
5:54
Speaker 1: of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and uh these were in one
5:58
Speaker 1: hundred pound paper sack x akin to the kind of
6:01
Speaker 1: sex that you would buy like Portland's cement in these days. Right. Um,
6:06
Speaker 1: There's some other cargo, seisal, twine, peanuts, there's some machinery,
6:11
Speaker 1: there was some cotton. There was sixteen cases of ammunition,
6:14
Speaker 1: I think, like for small arms. Ammunition um, but for
6:18
Speaker 1: the most part it was a lot of ammonium nitrate.
6:21
Speaker 1: And the same went for the s S High Flyer too,
6:24
Speaker 1: which as you said, was in the next birth. It
6:26
Speaker 1: was loaded with a thousand tons of ammonium nitrate and
6:29
Speaker 1: then also very crucially two thousand tons of sulfur, and
6:34
Speaker 1: all of these were also in those same hundred pound
6:36
Speaker 1: paper bags. So at the time, like I was saying,
6:40
Speaker 1: people didn't realize like this is this was a it
6:44
Speaker 1: was a big deal that there was that much ammonium
6:46
Speaker 1: nitrate just sitting around in this port at that time. Yeah,
6:50
Speaker 1: it's a it's a crystal like solid. It's white um.
6:54
Speaker 1: A lot of times it's used for nitrogen for agricultural fertilizer, uh,
7:00
Speaker 1: But if you combine it with fuel oils, it can
7:02
Speaker 1: be very explosive and actually used for that for like
7:06
Speaker 1: mining and construction and stuff like that. But it's not
7:09
Speaker 1: like you know, if you tap the side of the
7:13
Speaker 1: bag it's going to explode. It's pretty safe as long
7:16
Speaker 1: as it's all on the up and up and it's
7:17
Speaker 1: being stored properly. But if it starts to absorb moisture,
7:22
Speaker 1: then it's sort of like Portland's cement. Again, it's just
7:25
Speaker 1: gonna harden to a block. And then if that thing
7:28
Speaker 1: is in a solid block, it's going to be just
7:30
Speaker 1: a little bit more volatile and a little bit more
7:33
Speaker 1: dangerous if ignited. Yeah. And I mean like it's not
7:36
Speaker 1: even considered flammable as far as I know, and certainly
7:39
Speaker 1: in n it wasn't considered flammable because if you walked
7:42
Speaker 1: up to some of this this ammonium nitrate, these pellets
7:45
Speaker 1: and just held the lighter to them, they wouldn't catch fire.
7:48
Speaker 1: That's not really what they do. What they do is
7:50
Speaker 1: they oxidize things. They basically create free radicals, like we
7:54
Speaker 1: talked about in the free Radical episode Yeah, um, which
7:58
Speaker 1: sets off like a chain reaction. Um. And because they oxidize,
8:03
Speaker 1: they concentrate and condense and produce basically oxygen where it
8:07
Speaker 1: was an otherwise present. When when that that is combined
8:12
Speaker 1: with the fire, it makes a big time fire. Um.
8:15
Speaker 1: So that's bad enough, right, Like if you set them
8:18
Speaker 1: off like it'll it'll combust, or it will help something
8:21
Speaker 1: else combust more efficiently and more more um at a
8:24
Speaker 1: higher temperature. But the problem, the big problem with ammonium
8:27
Speaker 1: nitrate is there is a point where it can reach
8:30
Speaker 1: a high enough heat that it itself decays and degrades.
8:36
Speaker 1: And when that happens, it splits into two gases, nitrous
8:39
Speaker 1: oxide and water vapor, which you're like, well, that's that's great.
8:43
Speaker 1: You know, it just gets super duper high off of
8:45
Speaker 1: one and the other one. It just makes you a
8:47
Speaker 1: little moist. Maybe so, maybe so in small enough amounts.
8:52
Speaker 1: But when this happens in a large enough amount, especially
8:55
Speaker 1: when this ammonium nitrate is in one big melted block, uh,
9:00
Speaker 1: the chain reaction can happen much more efficiently. And when
9:03
Speaker 1: those gases are UM are produced when the when the
9:07
Speaker 1: thing decays and separates UM, they expand really quickly, and
9:11
Speaker 1: that produces an explosion UM and the forces the energy
9:17
Speaker 1: that's released from an explosion of ammonium nitrate decaying and
9:20
Speaker 1: converting into nitrous oxide and water vapor is monumental, like
9:26
Speaker 1: compared to atomic bomb blast. Basically, if you have enough
9:30
Speaker 1: of it, say tons and a thousand tons and a
9:33
Speaker 1: couple of ships to sitting import. All right, that's a
9:36
Speaker 1: great place for cliffhanger. I think I think so too.
9:40
Speaker 1: All Right, we'll be right back after this, alright, So
10:11
Speaker 1: this stuff, the cargo arrived by train to Texas City,
10:17
Speaker 1: and it was probably already heating up a little bit
10:20
Speaker 1: on this train and maybe already getting to the point
10:23
Speaker 1: where it was a little I don't know about unstable,
10:26
Speaker 1: but volatile at least. And the it gets transferred to
10:31
Speaker 1: the ship, it continues to sort of heat up, and
10:34
Speaker 1: the crew and everything, Like you said, there wasn't a
10:37
Speaker 1: lot of awareness about kind of anything like this at
10:40
Speaker 1: the time, So to them it was just another cargo hold.
10:44
Speaker 1: They might have said, like, you know, be careful with
10:46
Speaker 1: the stuff, guys, or maybe not even that, but they
10:49
Speaker 1: definitely didn't know, like heat bad for this stuff. Yeah,
10:52
Speaker 1: they said, you only two bucks from lunch yesterday. That's
10:55
Speaker 1: what they said when they were loading this up. So
10:58
Speaker 1: around eight am, the more earning Uh, these workers there
11:01
Speaker 1: started noticing that there was smoke and vapors coming out
11:05
Speaker 1: of the ship. Uh. So there was some kind of
11:07
Speaker 1: a fire going on. No one knew how it started
11:10
Speaker 1: or what happened. There are some people anecdotally it was
11:13
Speaker 1: a cigarette. Uh that was not in the could have
11:16
Speaker 1: been that wasn't in the official report, which also wouldn't
11:20
Speaker 1: be surprising. Well, what I saw. I saw it later
11:22
Speaker 1: on Chuck that um, the fact that these things were
11:25
Speaker 1: in those paper sacks, that if they were heating up,
11:28
Speaker 1: they were just going to continue to heat up. Being
11:30
Speaker 1: packed tightly in the hold of this unventilated ship. Um,
11:35
Speaker 1: they were just going to get warmer and warmer. And
11:36
Speaker 1: it's possible they that the the ammonium nitrate caused the
11:40
Speaker 1: paper sack to combust, catch fire, spread to other paper sacks,
11:44
Speaker 1: and then you had a positive feedback loop where it
11:48
Speaker 1: just kept getting The fire kept getting bigger and bigger,
11:51
Speaker 1: and crucially very important, hotter and hotter. Right, So the
11:56
Speaker 1: captain sees this happening. There are people kind of pouring
11:59
Speaker 1: in and looking around at what's going on. The captain says,
12:02
Speaker 1: batting down these hatches. The police harps over him and
12:07
Speaker 1: start pumping steam in there, which apparently was a method
12:11
Speaker 1: at the time to put out a fire on a
12:13
Speaker 1: ship when you didn't want to ruin the cargo, as
12:17
Speaker 1: opposed to just blasting it with a fire hose, which
12:19
Speaker 1: would cause all the stuff to just brick up like
12:22
Speaker 1: Portland's cement. He starts pumping steam in there and that
12:26
Speaker 1: just started heating. You know, everyone knows steam is gonna
12:28
Speaker 1: heat stuff up, so that just started and the moisture
12:31
Speaker 1: made a bad situation a lot worse really quickly. Yeah,
12:34
Speaker 1: I get the impression that had The captain's name was
12:38
Speaker 1: Captain Charles de guillabond Um. He had he made the
12:42
Speaker 1: decision to just go ahead and let the cargo be
12:45
Speaker 1: ruined and have the fire put out with fire hoses.
12:48
Speaker 1: This all might never have happened, but it was. And you,
12:52
Speaker 1: I mean, I understand where he was coming from. He
12:54
Speaker 1: didn't want to ruin the cargo if he didn't have to,
12:56
Speaker 1: because steaming out a fire aboard a ship was a
13:00
Speaker 1: h an accepted firefighting technique. It works, and it could
13:03
Speaker 1: conceivably save a lot of the cargo. So it's not
13:06
Speaker 1: like he just made this ridiculous, stupid mistake. It's just
13:11
Speaker 1: in hindsight, it was probably the decision that led to
13:14
Speaker 1: this catastrophe. Yeah, I mean, I think more than anything,
13:18
Speaker 1: it's like you said, it was the time when there
13:21
Speaker 1: was not much regulation and it's sort of in the
13:24
Speaker 1: dawning of the chemical age. People just didn't know right.
13:26
Speaker 1: And Plus also at the time, um Texas City had
13:30
Speaker 1: a volunteer fire department UM which I would guess, wouldn't
13:33
Speaker 1: have quite as much jurisdiction and could be told by
13:36
Speaker 1: a captain like no, no, no, just go away, like
13:39
Speaker 1: I'm I'm gonna handle this myself, rather than being like,
13:42
Speaker 1: uh no, we're going to put the fire out on
13:44
Speaker 1: on your ship. Yeah, it's a good point. So the
13:48
Speaker 1: steam is making things worse. Uh. It pumped into the
13:53
Speaker 1: holds and everything's heating up. Everything's getting moist and like
13:56
Speaker 1: we said, moisture is no good for this stuff, and
13:59
Speaker 1: it did started to convert to these solid masses and
14:02
Speaker 1: you know, there's gonna be gas releasing, and it's building
14:05
Speaker 1: up all this pressure because they had battened down the
14:07
Speaker 1: hatches and covered them with tarps, and it so much
14:10
Speaker 1: so that it blew these hatch covers off at about
14:12
Speaker 1: eight thirty in the morning. It's crazy. Just that alone
14:15
Speaker 1: would have been spectacular, and I'm sure it was um.
14:19
Speaker 1: But when those hatches blew off, all the smoke that
14:22
Speaker 1: had been kind of stuck in the hole inside the
14:25
Speaker 1: ship started billowing out. And the thing apparently about ammonium
14:29
Speaker 1: nitrate burning is it produces really kind of mesmerizing colored
14:33
Speaker 1: smoke from one of the um witnesses. It was apparently
14:37
Speaker 1: salmon orange and purple, and so the smoke coming out
14:41
Speaker 1: of it um started to attract people like like onlookers
14:45
Speaker 1: who were like, what's what's going on? I want to
14:47
Speaker 1: go see this giant, weird fire that's going on down
14:50
Speaker 1: at the port, And something like three hundred people, including
14:55
Speaker 1: entire families, kids from the local school came over. Um,
15:00
Speaker 1: all sorts of people just kind of stopped what they
15:01
Speaker 1: were doing and came to watch this weird fire at
15:04
Speaker 1: the port. And apparently KGB C out of Galveston, which
15:08
Speaker 1: is just ten miles down the coast out in the
15:12
Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico. Um, they were warning people to stay away,
15:15
Speaker 1: but apparently that just alerted more people that there was
15:18
Speaker 1: something going on who went down to go check it
15:21
Speaker 1: out themselves. Yeah, so they knew that there was a
15:24
Speaker 1: big problem. At this point, they did call the firefighters
15:27
Speaker 1: in and a tugboat to maybe try and get that
15:29
Speaker 1: thing out of there. And Uh, at this point, like
15:33
Speaker 1: you said, the heat was just so great that even
15:35
Speaker 1: a fire hose isn't gonna do much. It's kind of
15:37
Speaker 1: just vaporizing when it hits it because of the massive
15:40
Speaker 1: amounts of heat, and then you know, this whole thing
15:43
Speaker 1: started eight. At eight thirty is when the hatches blue.
15:47
Speaker 1: And then at nine the thing exploded. And we're gonna
15:52
Speaker 1: kind of list through a pretty horrifying list of um
15:56
Speaker 1: of impacts from like distances like a size of a
16:00
Speaker 1: graph in Denver, Colorado picked up this explosion UM and
16:07
Speaker 1: this is again in the southernmost part of Texas, right, Yeah,
16:11
Speaker 1: like they felt it in Louisiana, you know, like three
16:14
Speaker 1: thousand foot fire bombs and cargo flying up in the air.
16:19
Speaker 1: So yeah, the the enormous amount of energy that I
16:22
Speaker 1: was talking about that was released by this tons of
16:25
Speaker 1: ammonium nitrate UM in retrospect I think has been the
16:30
Speaker 1: I saw compared to a two point seven kiloton blast,
16:35
Speaker 1: which would put this blast of this ship blowing up
16:39
Speaker 1: at somewhere on the order of about one third no
16:42
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, one five of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb which
16:48
Speaker 1: just completely leveled that city. This was about a fifth
16:51
Speaker 1: that size, so it was still a really substantial, enormous blast.
16:55
Speaker 1: And one of the first effects that had is that
16:57
Speaker 1: it blew this Liberty Ship, this huge World War two
17:00
Speaker 1: era cargo ship, a couple of thousand feet into the
17:04
Speaker 1: air in multiple pieces to just shower out downward as
17:10
Speaker 1: hot metal shrapnel UM onto the surrounding city. And that's
17:14
Speaker 1: not accounting for the shrapnel that immediately blew outward as
17:17
Speaker 1: those gases expand, um expanded right into all of those
17:21
Speaker 1: onlookers and the people who are fighting the fire around
17:24
Speaker 1: the port. Yeah, there was. They had a couple of
17:27
Speaker 1: two ton anchors. One of those went about a mile
17:30
Speaker 1: and a half away in the air. Uh. Like we said,
17:34
Speaker 1: you could feel it in Louisiana. That was um, a
17:36
Speaker 1: mon Santo and a Union carbide, two different chemical plants
17:40
Speaker 1: kind of right beside it. They were just flattened, basically
17:43
Speaker 1: just not even there anymore. Yeah. I saw that one
17:45
Speaker 1: of the warehouses, Warehouse zero at the port, which was
17:48
Speaker 1: I think the one that was closest to the ship. UM.
17:50
Speaker 1: This historian from Houston, I think, said that it just
17:54
Speaker 1: disappeared like it was just gone, like it wasn't there
17:56
Speaker 1: any longer. Like the word disintegrate works in a lot
17:59
Speaker 1: of the instances when you're describing what happened to a
18:02
Speaker 1: lot of the structures and people who were around this
18:06
Speaker 1: this blast. Well, yeah, I mean that's the obvious thing.
18:10
Speaker 1: You know, there were hundreds of onlookers, there were people
18:12
Speaker 1: that worked there, There were all twenty eight members of
18:15
Speaker 1: the fire department. They were all killed basically instantly. Anyone
18:19
Speaker 1: within that zone was killed instantly. Some people, like you said,
18:24
Speaker 1: just just not even able to recover enough body parts
18:28
Speaker 1: to identify humans at that point. Yeah, that proved to
18:31
Speaker 1: be a real problem. So like, um, first of all,
18:33
Speaker 1: the fact that the entire fire department apparently one There
18:37
Speaker 1: was one survivor from the fire department, but he was
18:39
Speaker 1: out of town at the time, That's why he survived.
18:42
Speaker 1: But the whole fire department and all of their equipment
18:43
Speaker 1: was immediately wiped out. UM. One of the problems was
18:47
Speaker 1: with an explosion like this in a place like this
18:49
Speaker 1: is that it ruptures lines and pipes and all of
18:53
Speaker 1: those petrochemicals that are being refined suddenly catch fire. So
18:57
Speaker 1: now you have these out of control fires in buildings
19:00
Speaker 1: and structures that are left standing, UM, and you no
19:03
Speaker 1: longer have a fire department or any fire equipment to
19:06
Speaker 1: put it out for a little while. So the the
19:09
Speaker 1: immediate impact out outside of the blast was also the
19:13
Speaker 1: fires that were um lit just right after this too. Well,
19:19
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got you know, you've got the metal shrapnel,
19:22
Speaker 1: but then you've also remember there were peanuts and twine
19:25
Speaker 1: and cotton and all this stuff. So that's these are
19:27
Speaker 1: like fireballs being launched, basically starting fires all over the place.
19:32
Speaker 1: It wasn't just in the immediate area. And like you said,
19:35
Speaker 1: because the fire department was then out of commission. That's
19:39
Speaker 1: that's real trouble. Yeah, So it took a little while
19:41
Speaker 1: for um more AID to show up. But apparently this
19:45
Speaker 1: this explosion was so bad and the catastrophe was so
19:48
Speaker 1: great the Army, Navy, Coastguard, Marines, Texas National Guard, and
19:52
Speaker 1: then firefighters from surrounding UH cities all came out to
19:57
Speaker 1: help man. And this wasn't just like putting this Mike,
20:00
Speaker 1: we fire out, but also like trying to you know,
20:03
Speaker 1: rescue people from rubble. Like there's really a lot that
20:07
Speaker 1: we could sit here and say. But if you have
20:10
Speaker 1: a computer in front of you, like just look up
20:13
Speaker 1: pictures um from the Texas City explosion. Of it's just
20:19
Speaker 1: unreal what happened to like enormous steel buildings just turned
20:24
Speaker 1: into like twisted metal. And this is like, you know,
20:27
Speaker 1: the middle of a work day, so there were people
20:29
Speaker 1: trapped all over the place um in this debris. So
20:33
Speaker 1: there was a huge um rescue operation that had to start,
20:38
Speaker 1: but it was delayed because most of the people who
20:41
Speaker 1: were attasked with that kind of thing had all been
20:44
Speaker 1: killed in the initial blast. Yeah. So remember earlier we
20:48
Speaker 1: said that there were three ships there. Uh, this one
20:52
Speaker 1: blows up, and obviously, you know it's a it's a
20:56
Speaker 1: full on like eleven scene at this point with just
21:00
Speaker 1: how chaotic it is, people are uh not noticing that
21:04
Speaker 1: right next door, the S S. High Flyer also remember,
21:09
Speaker 1: was loaded with this stuff and also with sulfur which
21:12
Speaker 1: makes it become unstable, and this thing had been unlodged.
21:16
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm surprised. It's just the integrity of these
21:19
Speaker 1: ships is the only reason that those weren't just blown
21:22
Speaker 1: to bits too. Like it was kind of right next
21:25
Speaker 1: to it, and and it was still intact at least,
21:28
Speaker 1: and it was blown from its mooring zo and drifted
21:30
Speaker 1: over and kind of attached itself to the Wilson be Keen,
21:35
Speaker 1: which was again in the slip next to it. And
21:38
Speaker 1: I think there were some crew members aboard in there
21:41
Speaker 1: that I guess we're just protected by that thick steel,
21:44
Speaker 1: right from what I understand, And they were kind of
21:47
Speaker 1: still doing their things for a little while, and they
21:48
Speaker 1: were finally because the the high Flyer caught fire as well. Um,
21:53
Speaker 1: they were finally forced out by the smoke. Because this
21:56
Speaker 1: is some noxious, noxious smoke. This isn't I mean, this
21:59
Speaker 1: is just like wood burning smoke. This is some really
22:02
Speaker 1: bad chemical smoke that can mess you up. It's crazy
22:05
Speaker 1: that the sailors stayed aboard for an hour, but they're
22:07
Speaker 1: finally forced off a ship. But they tell people like, hey,
22:10
Speaker 1: this is this is on fire. Everybody's like, have you
22:13
Speaker 1: seen the other problems we have over here? And the
22:15
Speaker 1: fire department just got basically vaporized. Um, So the fire
22:20
Speaker 1: was allowed to continue on the high Flyer for hours,
22:24
Speaker 1: hours and hours like that. That blast happened at nine
22:26
Speaker 1: twelve am, and it wasn't until the afternoon that somebody
22:31
Speaker 1: else rediscovered the fire aboard the high Flyer and started
22:36
Speaker 1: to kind of like raise the alarm about this. Um. Still,
22:41
Speaker 1: this is such a chaotic scene that there wasn't anything
22:44
Speaker 1: immediately done about it. And it wasn't until eleven PM
22:47
Speaker 1: that they're finally like, oh, this is a really this
22:50
Speaker 1: is a bad jam because not only do we have
22:52
Speaker 1: a thousand tons tons of ammonium night trade aboard the
22:56
Speaker 1: high flyer, there's that sulfur you mentioned, Chuck, and like
22:58
Speaker 1: you said, it makes it even more un stable. And
23:00
Speaker 1: that you know how um ammonium nitrate oxidizes things. Sulfur
23:06
Speaker 1: is like food to that stuff is for it oxidizes sulfur.
23:10
Speaker 1: It's just like piling on this oxidizing fuel to make
23:15
Speaker 1: the blast even more energetic. So it would it would
23:20
Speaker 1: be a really big problem if the high fire blew up.
23:22
Speaker 1: So they brought in some tug boats in a fireboat
23:25
Speaker 1: I think from Galveston, and started to try to take
23:27
Speaker 1: it out of the berth um to tug it out
23:30
Speaker 1: to see to let it like burn out or blow
23:32
Speaker 1: up or whatever it was gonna do. But I guess
23:34
Speaker 1: it was stuck so fast that um that they couldn't
23:38
Speaker 1: get it out. Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know,
23:42
Speaker 1: this thing was not I guess just sort of wedged
23:45
Speaker 1: in there from that first explosion. And I think they
23:49
Speaker 1: worked on it for a couple of hours. They started
23:51
Speaker 1: at about eleven p m. And then it looks like
23:55
Speaker 1: by one am they had stopped that process and at
23:59
Speaker 1: one tin and this is now in April seventeen, you know,
24:02
Speaker 1: early next morning, Uh, the high Flyer exploded as well,
24:06
Speaker 1: and this was even more violent. Um. The only I mean,
24:11
Speaker 1: that's not a saving grace at all, because everything was
24:13
Speaker 1: already leveled. But the only reason it didn't cause a
24:16
Speaker 1: more death and more destruction, sadly is because everything was
24:19
Speaker 1: already destroyed and most people were already dead. Yeah. And
24:22
Speaker 1: plus also they knew enough by this time that they
24:25
Speaker 1: needed to clear the area that there wasn't anything they
24:27
Speaker 1: could do, so everybody who was working in the rescue
24:30
Speaker 1: operation was told to leave. So there I just I
24:34
Speaker 1: don't know if there were any more deaths from the
24:36
Speaker 1: high Flyer blowing up. But the problem was is that
24:39
Speaker 1: any fires that might have been put out were re lit,
24:42
Speaker 1: and other structures that may have been spared from the
24:45
Speaker 1: initial blasts were now leveled or caught fire or both.
24:49
Speaker 1: So it was a big problem that the high Flyer
24:51
Speaker 1: blew up as well. Uh, it sunk the Wilson Kinge too,
24:55
Speaker 1: did it sunk it? Um? And it was it was yeah,
24:59
Speaker 1: I can only imagine too. Also if you survived that
25:02
Speaker 1: first one to have another blast like that, even when
25:05
Speaker 1: you were away from and you knew was coming, would
25:08
Speaker 1: just do something to the nerves that would be really
25:10
Speaker 1: difficult to recover from. Yeah, for sure, you want to
25:13
Speaker 1: take a break. Yeah, we'll take a little break and
25:16
Speaker 1: we'll talk about sort of the results of the devastation
25:18
Speaker 1: and a couple of other incidents right after this. Okay,
25:50
Speaker 1: so chuck. UM. One thing that we didn't say was
25:53
Speaker 1: that the initial explosion by the Grand Camp created like
25:59
Speaker 1: a feteen foot tidal wave that washed inland and UM.
26:06
Speaker 1: People died almost in creative ways in this disaster, and
26:11
Speaker 1: one of those ways was, UM, those petrochemicals. I think
26:15
Speaker 1: there's a molasses refinery that started to get mixed in
26:18
Speaker 1: that kept the petrochemicals burning in the water when it
26:22
Speaker 1: mixed with them. When this tidal wave blew out, UM,
26:27
Speaker 1: when it blew in, I'm sorry, it was on fire.
26:29
Speaker 1: So it actually caught people on fire. It caught people
26:32
Speaker 1: on fire on the way back out to sea. And
26:34
Speaker 1: people who survived the initial blasts were actually swept out
26:37
Speaker 1: and drowned from this too. There were people who died
26:41
Speaker 1: in airplanes that had come around to kind of circle
26:44
Speaker 1: the area. UM, and we're blown out of the sky. Um.
26:48
Speaker 1: There were people who died in buildings that collapsed. There
26:52
Speaker 1: were people who died from shrapnel falling out of the
26:54
Speaker 1: sky and killing them even though they were miles away.
26:57
Speaker 1: Like there were there was so much death than destruction
27:00
Speaker 1: that it's really difficult to get across what happened to
27:04
Speaker 1: this poor little ports city that hadn't done anything to anybody,
27:08
Speaker 1: that just suddenly blew up. Yeah. In the end, Uh,
27:13
Speaker 1: the official death toll was close to six people, hundred
27:19
Speaker 1: and thirteen of which were just vaporized. No trace was
27:23
Speaker 1: ever found of a hundred and thirteen people. UH, casualties
27:28
Speaker 1: up to five thousand. The numbers kind of vary, but
27:31
Speaker 1: anywhere from thirty undred to five thousand. And you know,
27:35
Speaker 1: Texas City was not a very big place. It was
27:37
Speaker 1: about sixteen thousand strong. So this was just devastating to
27:41
Speaker 1: the city. Uh, into the region. Um. It took about
27:45
Speaker 1: a week to put out all these fires, and I
27:48
Speaker 1: think a full month plus to recover whatever bodies they
27:53
Speaker 1: could recover at that point. Yeah, the final body wasn't
27:56
Speaker 1: found until mid May. UM. The there was there were
28:01
Speaker 1: people who were never um, like you said, accounted for
28:05
Speaker 1: there were there were the converse of that was true too,
28:09
Speaker 1: there were parts of people that were never identified. UM.
28:14
Speaker 1: And one of the accounts that I read was like
28:17
Speaker 1: I was saying, was written by UH, I think a
28:19
Speaker 1: University of Houston historian UM named Cheryl Lowers doorf ross
28:27
Speaker 1: in UM the he in the Journal Houston History. But
28:31
Speaker 1: she recounts somebody UM mentioning a woman who was trying
28:35
Speaker 1: to identify her husband who was lost in the disaster,
28:39
Speaker 1: and she had to sort through hands. They had a
28:42
Speaker 1: collection of hands that UM, this woman was trying to
28:46
Speaker 1: figure out which one belonged to her husband. And like,
28:49
Speaker 1: that's just nuts to hear. But if you could even
28:52
Speaker 1: begin to put yourself into that woman's shoes, the reality
28:56
Speaker 1: of that, yes, of being in that room, of like
28:57
Speaker 1: looking at different hands, and then also not just the
29:00
Speaker 1: horror of of that, of of like having to look
29:03
Speaker 1: through body parts that may or may not be your husband's,
29:05
Speaker 1: but then the self doubt, like is that my husband's hand,
29:08
Speaker 1: Like I don't remember what it looked like, you know,
29:10
Speaker 1: like that just your mind messing with you on top
29:13
Speaker 1: of the horrific experience that you're already undergoing. But she
29:18
Speaker 1: was one of many, because something like sixty one um
29:22
Speaker 1: people I believe were interred without being identified, but there
29:28
Speaker 1: their remains were um kind of assembled and uh and
29:33
Speaker 1: and put together in a memorial service that was attended
29:36
Speaker 1: by something like thousands of people, I believe, So, Chuck,
29:39
Speaker 1: So if there was sixteen thousand people and that many
29:42
Speaker 1: people were hurt or killed by this blast, you can
29:46
Speaker 1: imagine how quickly this little town was overwhelmed with all
29:49
Speaker 1: these casualties. And so they were getting people like every
29:52
Speaker 1: which way, trucking them over to Galt, Galveston, like getting
29:54
Speaker 1: them wherever they could, whatever hospital they could find. But
29:57
Speaker 1: very quickly the high school gym was taken over to
30:00
Speaker 1: serve as a field hospital, and then shortly after that
30:03
Speaker 1: the morgue. And one of the stories that stuck out
30:06
Speaker 1: to me was the boy Scouts were pressed into service
30:09
Speaker 1: to basically help out however they could. And these poor
30:11
Speaker 1: little like like teenage and preteen Scouts are like working
30:17
Speaker 1: in this makeshift morgue in their high school gym. Like,
30:21
Speaker 1: imagine the impression that had on them the rest of
30:23
Speaker 1: their life, you know, I know, isn't that crazy? Like
30:26
Speaker 1: every aspect of this story is just nuts it's very sad. Yeah,
30:31
Speaker 1: and of course the the financial loss was huge, UM
30:34
Speaker 1: about a hundred million dollars in property loss five million
30:37
Speaker 1: and loss petroleum products and that's about seven hundred million
30:43
Speaker 1: and three point five billion in today dollars. I think
30:48
Speaker 1: there is UM sort of buried beneath the berms there
30:51
Speaker 1: as a memorial park where sixty three unidentified victims are buried. Yeah,
30:56
Speaker 1: that's what I was talking about. Yeah, and there's that
30:59
Speaker 1: anchor that we talked about. I don't know if it
31:01
Speaker 1: was the one that actually blew the mile and a
31:02
Speaker 1: half away, but at least one of the anchors is
31:06
Speaker 1: uh is a monument at the park along with UM
31:09
Speaker 1: a scarred propeller from the high flyer at the entrance
31:12
Speaker 1: to the port there at Texas City. Yeah. So that
31:15
Speaker 1: UM that funeral procession that they had that attracted I
31:18
Speaker 1: think something like five thousand mourners. UM was a real
31:21
Speaker 1: like community effort. UM. There was something like fifty plus
31:27
Speaker 1: funeral homes from twenty eight different cities that all participated,
31:31
Speaker 1: and each of these sixty three unidentified people were there
31:35
Speaker 1: remains I should say, we're put in their own individual
31:37
Speaker 1: caskets and buried in the Memorial Park, which is still
31:40
Speaker 1: you know there that that park is still there with
31:42
Speaker 1: the anchor and everything. Um, but it was. It's just
31:46
Speaker 1: it's such an enormous, weird catastrophe and just such a
31:50
Speaker 1: devastating thing, especially looking back seventy years to read about.
31:54
Speaker 1: But when you do read about it, if you can
31:56
Speaker 1: just kind of put yourself in mind of what that
31:57
Speaker 1: was like, if you know, trying to recover from that,
32:02
Speaker 1: it's it's astounding that Texas City did recover. A lot
32:05
Speaker 1: of people moved um and just said not only like,
32:09
Speaker 1: do I think the city is never going to come
32:11
Speaker 1: back from this? I don't know if I can come
32:12
Speaker 1: back from this, But the city actually did come back,
32:15
Speaker 1: and they did build back from what I understand, even
32:18
Speaker 1: bigger than before, which is how that BP refinery that
32:21
Speaker 1: ended up blowing up that became the most profitable and
32:24
Speaker 1: VP's entire company. Um. Because the city built back even
32:28
Speaker 1: better than before. That's great. It is great. I mean
32:32
Speaker 1: not great that it exploded again in two thousand five, obviously,
32:36
Speaker 1: but great that they were had to stick to it
32:39
Speaker 1: nous to come back as a city. So you know,
32:41
Speaker 1: obviously following something like this, there's gonna be a lot
32:44
Speaker 1: more regulation going on. The US is gonna step up
32:48
Speaker 1: federally and say, hey, wait a minute, we really need
32:50
Speaker 1: to take a look at how we're handling these chemicals,
32:52
Speaker 1: how we're storing these things, how we're shipping these things. Uh.
32:56
Speaker 1: And a lot of changes were made here and around
32:58
Speaker 1: the world. But it's not to say that that completely
33:02
Speaker 1: prevented this from happening again, because in Beirute just last
33:06
Speaker 1: year in August, there was another big cargo of ammonium
33:10
Speaker 1: nitrate that had been sitting in a warehouse for seven years.
33:14
Speaker 1: It's no one is exactly sure whyatt ignited this time,
33:18
Speaker 1: but there was a dock worker that said that there
33:20
Speaker 1: were fireworks stored nearby, and they did find thousands of
33:25
Speaker 1: kilograms of fireworks recovered from a warehouse at that port.
33:29
Speaker 1: And this explosion was you know, it was a crater
33:32
Speaker 1: about four hundred and sixty ft wide, and you know,
33:35
Speaker 1: it was about as big as the Texas City blasts.
33:37
Speaker 1: I So I saw both. I saw that it was
33:39
Speaker 1: about as big, and I saw that it was about
33:41
Speaker 1: half the size. But I mean that even a half,
33:44
Speaker 1: you know. But so yeah, go look at video that
33:47
Speaker 1: what's astounding about that Beirute blast is there happens to
33:49
Speaker 1: be people who are filming when it happened, because there
33:52
Speaker 1: was a fire. I remember when it happened. Yeah, so
33:54
Speaker 1: you've seen that that like that white cloud, that's that
33:57
Speaker 1: water vapor expanding right and the you can't see it,
34:01
Speaker 1: but there's nitrous oxide gas in there as well. Um,
34:05
Speaker 1: so imagine twice that size. That's that would probably be
34:10
Speaker 1: about the size of that first Texas City blast in nine. Yeah.
34:15
Speaker 1: I mean I remember seeing it on the news and
34:19
Speaker 1: I don't remember if they mentioned Texas City, but um yeah,
34:23
Speaker 1: I mean this is stuff that was just stored down
34:24
Speaker 1: there for like seven years, soaking up that that warm,
34:27
Speaker 1: kind of moist Mediterranean breeze. Uh. Not the way you
34:30
Speaker 1: should handle and store the stuf now. And like the
34:32
Speaker 1: story behind is kind of interesting, Like the was started
34:36
Speaker 1: in Georgia, not our Georgia, but the Republic of Georgia.
34:39
Speaker 1: Um on way en route to Mozambique, and the apparently
34:42
Speaker 1: the owners were like, we're not making enough money on
34:44
Speaker 1: this this trip, so we're gonna divert over to um
34:48
Speaker 1: Bay route and pick up some more freight. And the
34:50
Speaker 1: crew said, no, we're not gonna do it's gonna make
34:52
Speaker 1: the weight dangerous. So they balked port feat started racking up,
34:55
Speaker 1: and the owners apparently just decided to abandon the crew,
34:58
Speaker 1: the ship, and the cargo. The cargo once it was impounded,
35:01
Speaker 1: should have been sold off, but it wasn't. Instead, it just,
35:04
Speaker 1: like you said, sat there, stored incorrectly for six years
35:08
Speaker 1: until something caused it to blow up, which is I mean,
35:12
Speaker 1: just the the idea that it was just negligence that
35:15
Speaker 1: led to that catastrophe is it's even worse. I think
35:19
Speaker 1: that's something that's missing from the Texas City disaster there.
35:22
Speaker 1: There wasn't really any negligent act. Maybe a mistake or
35:26
Speaker 1: a bad choice, but no one was particularly negligent about it.
35:30
Speaker 1: So I think that's it kind of makes the Beirute
35:33
Speaker 1: last even worse that people were supposed to be doing
35:36
Speaker 1: stuff that they didn't do and a lot of people
35:37
Speaker 1: died as a result. Yeah. I think the BP refinery
35:41
Speaker 1: in two thousand five, they had to pay out about
35:44
Speaker 1: fifty million bucks for that one after they did a
35:49
Speaker 1: a little safety audit and in that safety audit um
35:52
Speaker 1: they found it and this was before the blast. Actually
35:54
Speaker 1: they did a safety audit and they found that a
35:56
Speaker 1: lot of people that worked at this plant, um it says,
35:59
Speaker 1: came to work with quote an exceptional degree of fear
36:02
Speaker 1: of catastrophic incidences. Yeah, incidents in quote. That's a little
36:06
Speaker 1: bit of a ocean nightmare. Everything that I've read about
36:09
Speaker 1: that was that that was the direct result of BP
36:12
Speaker 1: cutting safety in favor of higher profit margins. That that's
36:17
Speaker 1: what happened. That's what allowed this plant to deteriorate. And
36:19
Speaker 1: the machinery just didn't work. But they traced this explosion.
36:22
Speaker 1: This is an oil refinery explosion. It had nothing to
36:25
Speaker 1: do with ammonium nitrate. But the does I think whatever
36:30
Speaker 1: whatever chemical they put in gas to boost the octane level.
36:35
Speaker 1: They turned a machine on that does that, and somehow,
36:38
Speaker 1: like all these components to the gasoline started vaporizing out
36:42
Speaker 1: into the air. It started shooting out of this tower
36:44
Speaker 1: because the pressure was overloaded and there was so much
36:48
Speaker 1: gas vapor in the air that somebody had a pickup
36:50
Speaker 1: truck running nearby and it got sucked up into the
36:54
Speaker 1: air and take and the engine started revving, and that's
36:57
Speaker 1: actually what ignited the whole thing. All of this gas
36:59
Speaker 1: vay for this pickup truck sucking in gas molecules that
37:03
Speaker 1: were just vaporized in the air around it. Crazy in
37:06
Speaker 1: Texas City. Again, it's crazy. So you got anything else?
37:14
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. Well, if you want to know
37:15
Speaker 1: more about the Texas City disaster, you can go look
37:19
Speaker 1: that up UM. I would strongly recommend reading UM Cheryl
37:23
Speaker 1: Lowers door for ross Is Changing Lives and a Heartbeat
37:27
Speaker 1: Journal article. And also big shout out to fire Engineering
37:32
Speaker 1: dot Com they had a good one and then the
37:34
Speaker 1: Local twelve fifty nine the Texas City Firefighters Union UM
37:39
Speaker 1: has a really comprehensive overview of the Texas City disaster too,
37:43
Speaker 1: so maybe check those out for even more details. And
37:46
Speaker 1: since since I said that, it's time for a listener mail, Yeah,
37:51
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this, uh, well, I'm gonna call it
37:55
Speaker 1: what Ryan called it. Well, I'm dumb, but I'm over it. Hey,
38:00
Speaker 1: it's a long time. First time. I thought i'd tell
38:03
Speaker 1: you you had me duped for a long time. When
38:04
Speaker 1: I first started listening to the show, so a few
38:06
Speaker 1: years ago, and probably for a year after that first episode,
38:09
Speaker 1: I honestly thought there was a list of keywords that
38:12
Speaker 1: Josh referred to towards the end of the episode, whenever
38:15
Speaker 1: he says, well, since I said blank, it's time for
38:18
Speaker 1: listener mail for an embarrassing this is very cute. For
38:22
Speaker 1: an embarrassingly long time, I really thought that the blank
38:26
Speaker 1: word was from a predetermined master list, and that you
38:30
Speaker 1: had revealed that list of words to the audience in
38:32
Speaker 1: an early episode. I guess, like the magic word inhouse, Yeah,
38:39
Speaker 1: was that what it was? Yeah? This guy was to
38:42
Speaker 1: really love Pee's Playhouse. I started listening to increasing the
38:46
Speaker 1: older episodes and hopes that I would hear that list
38:48
Speaker 1: or catch a trend toward the words used. Josh's transition
38:52
Speaker 1: with that statement at the end of every episode is
38:54
Speaker 1: just so smooth. Hey, there you go. It wasn't until
38:57
Speaker 1: one episode, when Josh's word was so mundane o common
39:00
Speaker 1: it's probably the or if or something along those lines,
39:03
Speaker 1: that I finally realized there is no list. I had
39:05
Speaker 1: been fooled. Fell from his eyes and he was fly, Well,
39:11
Speaker 1: since you said scales, those random words are just that random.
39:14
Speaker 1: Actually felt a bit disappointed when I realized this, but
39:17
Speaker 1: it actually took some of the mystery out of the show.
39:19
Speaker 1: But I'm over it now. Whether or not it's good
39:21
Speaker 1: to admit I've been fooled by this for a long
39:23
Speaker 1: time is up for debate. But the meaning to tell
39:25
Speaker 1: you about this for a while. I hope you think
39:27
Speaker 1: of me every time Josh transitions to listener mail. From
39:29
Speaker 1: now on, I totally will take care and keep doing
39:33
Speaker 1: what you're doing because it's a fantastic show. And since
39:36
Speaker 1: I said show dot dot dot what that's great? That
39:40
Speaker 1: is from Ryan Peschel. Thanks Ryan, Thanks for getting in
39:43
Speaker 1: our heads like that. Apparently we got in your heads too,
39:45
Speaker 1: so it's only fair, don't you think, Chuck. Yeah, And
39:49
Speaker 1: just right then, I didn't think we had a listener
39:51
Speaker 1: mail and then look what pops up. Ryan Pecial saves
39:54
Speaker 1: the day again. And only Ryan knows what I'm talking about.
39:58
Speaker 1: I just ruined his life again. He's back in the game. Uh.
40:02
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us and
40:03
Speaker 1: try to get in our heads like Ryan did, so
40:05
Speaker 1: we have to think of you every time we say
40:07
Speaker 1: something about listener mail or what have you, you can
40:10
Speaker 1: write to us send us an email to Stuff podcast
40:14
Speaker 1: at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
40:19
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40:22
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40:25
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