

April 16 marks the 67th anniversary of the Texas City Disaster.







More below the fold.

It was a creeping disaster, starting with fire aboard the Grandchamp as it was being loaded, including fires aboard at least four vessels by day’s end, two massive explosions, a tsunami, and fires across the city as a result of raining debris. Here is part of the explanation from the IAFF Local 1259 site:

Around 9:00, flames erupted from the open hatch, with smoke variously described as “a pretty gold, yellow color” or as “orange smoke in the morning sunlight…beautiful to see.” Twelve minutes later, the Grandcamp disintegrated in a prodigious explosion heard as far as 150 miles distant. A huge mushroom like cloud billowed more than 2,ooo feet into the morning air, the shockwave knocking two light planes flying overhead out of the sky. A thick curtain of steel shards scythed through workers along the docks and a crowd of curious onlookers who had gathered at the head of the slip at which the ship was moored. Blast over pressure and heat disintegrated the bodies of the firefighters and ship’s crew still on board. At the Monsanto plant, located across the slip, 145 of 450 shift workers perished. A fifteen-foot wave of water thrust from the slip by the force of the blast swept a large steel barge ashore and carried dead and injured persons back into the turning basin as it receded. Fragments of the Grandcamp, some weighing several tons, showered down throughout the port and town for several minutes, extending the range of casualties and property damage well into the business district, about a mile away. Falling shrapnel bombarded buildings and oil storage tanks at nearby refineries, ripping open pipes and tanks of flammable liquids and starting numerous fires. After the shrapnel, flaming balls of sisal and cotton from the ships cargo fell out of the sky, adding to the growing conflagration.

Some descriptions say the sisal rope in some places resembled a massive spider web across the city. The disaster wasn’t over, yet — for another half day ship fires would rage leading to a second explosion; again, from the IAFF Local 1259 site:


The disaster occurred shortly after the enactment of the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), which detailed how and when citizens could sue the government for injurious actions. Many people sued, including Elizabeth Dalehite, suing for wrongful death of her husband Henry Dalehite; at least 300 separate suits were consolidated into the Dalhite suit. Texas district federal courts determined the federal government was liable on several grounds (the ammonium nitrate was bound for Europe as part of the post-World War II reconstruction process); on appeal, however, the Supreme Court determined that various negligent acts by government decision makers did not make the government liable, since the negligence was in the planning of the processes, not in the execution, and planning negligence is immune from liability.

The case established that breaking through governmental immunity would be difficult even under the FTCA (an issue I dealt with in the radiation compensation issues three decades later). Notably, by the time the case got to the Supreme Court, a young attorney named Warren Burger was Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. , supervising the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. Burger appeared in court on behalf of the United States. Three years later President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Burger to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit where he sat for 13 years, until President Richard Nixon named him Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1969.

The Texas City disaster gets only brief coverage in most Texas history texts (there is no mention in Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS)). Neither do other disasters get much coverage, such as the Galveston hurricane of 1900 (between 6,000 and 15,000 dead), the New London School explosion of March 18, 1937, nor the famous 1957 Dallas tornado. The Dust Bowl was a longer-running disaster, and is covered, but not in so much depth as I would like. Without being too macabre, a Texas history teacher could make the course considerably more interesting, and perhaps relevant, with reference to these disasters and how they shaped the Texas psyche.

Disasters expose the errors and mistakes humans make in developing our modern world.  Often, they point out serious problems in government institutions, and they provide opportunities for heroes to rise to superhuman tasks.  The Texas City Disaster should be part of the core knowledge of all Texans.

Here are additional sources.

2014 updates:  

This is, indeed, mostly an encore post.

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3 Responses to Remembering the worst ever U.S. industrial accident, 1947: 576 dead at Texas City

  1. Ed Darrell says:

    It’s been a year. Solid reports on lackadaisical regulation of these dangerous substances have been done by WFAA Channel 8 in Dallas, and the Dallas Morning News, among others.

    But just now is the state starting to do anything to improve safety and prevent future accidents.

    Fortunately, West was much smaller than Texas City. Unfortunately, obvious lessons from Texas City either had not been learned, or were long forgotten, by this time last year.

    We remember history because we can prevent disaster. If we don’t remember history, we risk repeating disaster.


  2. Debra says:

    April is a bad month for fire disasters in Texas. Tomorrow is also the anniversary of the West fertilizer plant explosion. the media is saying the survivors just want to move past it and just see it as an accident. But that was clearly an ‘accident’ waiting to happen. I really wish people would remember these things and use them as cautionary tales.


  3. Black Flag® says:

    How easy for government to advert its culpability whenever it sees fit to do so.




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