March 18, 2021 • 40 mins
In 1947 the port town of Texas City, Texas became the site of the largest industrial disaster in American history. An enormous explosion blew ships out of the water, created a tidal wave that flooded the town, and killed hundreds of people instantly.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,
and this is stuff you should know. It's about to
(00:25):
say natural disaster edition, but unnatural disaster edition. Industrial disaster
is what they call these human caused. In fact, from
what I saw what we're going to talk about today,
the main thing we're talking about today is the largest
industrial disaster in United States history? Still, oh still, yes,
what's seventy almost seventy five years on? Man, sad this
(00:50):
is a big one. Yeah, everything about this was really big,
but in basically all the wrong ways. Um, We're gonna
talk today about a disaster called the Texas City explosion,
and sadly you might say which one, because there's been
multiple massive explosions in Texas City. One of the reasons
(01:11):
why is because Texas City is has made a name
for itself as one of the premier petrochemical ports in
the United States and indeed possibly the world. I think
it was um up until World War Two, it was
like the fourth largest port in Texas, But I think
since World War Two um, it's grown even more. And
(01:33):
I know for a little while there, BP had a
refinery that was its most profitable oil refinery in the world,
which is really saying something. I mean, that's a big deal.
BP is an enormous company with multiple refinery so you know,
for the biggest one, the most profitable one to be
in Texas City. That kind of put Texas City on
(01:54):
the map in some circles. Yeah. So Texas City is
above the Gulf of Mexico, and like you said, it's
a port town founded in the late eighteen hundreds by
some Minnesota hunters and they said, you know what, I
think we can set up shop here. I think we
can dig up a canal, set up a rail line.
We've got some really good deep water, and we could
(02:14):
be a good shipping port. I want to know how they, like,
what what conversation led to that, Like what hunting trip
ends up in you basically building a port town in
a city that's about as far away from your home
as you can get in the same country. Yeah, I
mean there were some real go getters, I guess. Yeah,
I guess. So they couldn't just relax and kill animals.
(02:38):
Oh god, Uh so that's what happened to Texas City.
I mean, that's how it was kind of founded, and
it was like think refineries, think warehouses and chemical plants. Uh.
World War two comes around in the military, of course
as well, will be sort of controlling this area for
a while because it's pretty valuable port for US, and
(02:59):
we're going to ship munitions in and out of here.
World War two comes and goes, and then after the war,
about a year and a half after the war, it
is run by civilians again. And let's just say that
it was a little more of a relaxed scene than
it was when the military was running the show. Yeah,
they the military ran like a tight ship basically. Um.
(03:22):
And yeah, well there's just a big difference between when
the military is running a port and when the port's
run by just a whole bunch of different private companies,
you know what I'm saying. In Minnesota hunters exactly. So Um.
That's not to say it was just some loosey goosey
um place or anything like that, but just comparatively speaking. Uh.
And one of the one of the other things that
(03:44):
Texas City had going against it on the morning of
April is that there weren't really a lot of standards
and regulations for handling chemicals, and then we didn't have
an enormous grasp on just how chemicals worked at that time. Um,
and so all of this, all of these things kind
(04:06):
of came together is kind of slightly lax oversight and
just kind of lack much more relaxed attitude toward cargo
and then a lack of awareness about just what kind
of dangers different cargoes pose just kind of set things
up for to take a bad turn. Yeah, So on
the morning of April six, there were three ships docked
(04:27):
in the port um. There was most notably the S S.
Grand Camp, which was it was a it was a
military ship at one point, but I think we gave
it to France as like a hey, sorry, Europe is
kind of destroyed, why don't you take this ship and
just use it for whatever you want to do. And
(04:48):
it was converted to a cargo ship, which is which
it was on the day of April six, And it
was beside the S S. High Flyer, And that was
beside the third one named after somebody, what was that one?
The Robert Keene or the William Keane. Oh wait, a minute,
which one was it? Well, it was the Wilson bee
(05:10):
Key even better, right, the Billy Keen as they called it. Yeah,
and I believe all three of those were liberty ships, right, Yeah,
they were World War two ships and they were I
think the SS high Flyer was being fixed at the
time but was still loaded down with stuff, as was
the Grand Camp. And will sort of detail what was
(05:30):
in the cargo because it's all very very key. Yeah,
it's really important. So for five days leading up to
April sixt m Steve Doors, I think that's how you
say it, but basically dock hands. I don't know why
you wouldn't just say dock hands, you know, but the
Steven Doors, um man, I hope I'm saying that correctly, Chuck.
They had loaded up the Grand Camp with dred tons
(05:54):
of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and uh these were in one
hundred pound paper sack x akin to the kind of
sex that you would buy like Portland's cement in these days. Right. Um,
There's some other cargo, seisal, twine, peanuts, there's some machinery,
there was some cotton. There was sixteen cases of ammunition,
(06:14):
I think, like for small arms. Ammunition um, but for
the most part it was a lot of ammonium nitrate.
And the same went for the s S High Flyer too,
which as you said, was in the next birth. It
was loaded with a thousand tons of ammonium nitrate and
then also very crucially two thousand tons of sulfur, and
(06:34):
all of these were also in those same hundred pound
paper bags. So at the time, like I was saying,
people didn't realize like this is this was a it
was a big deal that there was that much ammonium
nitrate just sitting around in this port at that time. Yeah,
it's a it's a crystal like solid. It's white um.
(06:54):
A lot of times it's used for nitrogen for agricultural fertilizer, uh,
But if you combine it with fuel oils, it can
be very explosive and actually used for that for like
mining and construction and stuff like that. But it's not
like you know, if you tap the side of the
bag it's going to explode. It's pretty safe as long
(07:16):
as it's all on the up and up and it's
being stored properly. But if it starts to absorb moisture,
then it's sort of like Portland's cement. Again, it's just
gonna harden to a block. And then if that thing
is in a solid block, it's going to be just
a little bit more volatile and a little bit more
dangerous if ignited. Yeah. And I mean like it's not
(07:36):
even considered flammable as far as I know, and certainly
in n it wasn't considered flammable because if you walked
up to some of this this ammonium nitrate, these pellets
and just held the lighter to them, they wouldn't catch fire.
That's not really what they do. What they do is
they oxidize things. They basically create free radicals, like we
talked about in the free Radical episode Yeah, um, which
(07:58):
sets off like a chain reaction. Um. And because they oxidize,
they concentrate and condense and produce basically oxygen where it
was an otherwise present. When when that that is combined
with the fire, it makes a big time fire. Um.
So that's bad enough, right, Like if you set them
(08:18):
off like it'll it'll combust, or it will help something
else combust more efficiently and more more um at a
higher temperature. But the problem, the big problem with ammonium
nitrate is there is a point where it can reach
a high enough heat that it itself decays and degrades.
And when that happens, it splits into two gases, nitrous
(08:39):
oxide and water vapor, which you're like, well, that's that's great.
You know, it just gets super duper high off of
one and the other one. It just makes you a
little moist. Maybe so, maybe so in small enough amounts.
But when this happens in a large enough amount, especially
when this ammonium nitrate is in one big melted block, uh,
(09:00):
the chain reaction can happen much more efficiently. And when
those gases are UM are produced when the when the
thing decays and separates UM, they expand really quickly, and
that produces an explosion UM and the forces the energy
that's released from an explosion of ammonium nitrate decaying and
(09:20):
converting into nitrous oxide and water vapor is monumental, like
compared to atomic bomb blast. Basically, if you have enough
of it, say tons and a thousand tons and a
couple of ships to sitting import. All right, that's a
great place for cliffhanger. I think I think so too.
All Right, we'll be right back after this, alright, So
(10:11):
this stuff, the cargo arrived by train to Texas City,
and it was probably already heating up a little bit
on this train and maybe already getting to the point
where it was a little I don't know about unstable,
but volatile at least. And the it gets transferred to
the ship, it continues to sort of heat up, and
(10:34):
the crew and everything, Like you said, there wasn't a
lot of awareness about kind of anything like this at
the time, So to them it was just another cargo hold.
They might have said, like, you know, be careful with
the stuff, guys, or maybe not even that, but they
definitely didn't know, like heat bad for this stuff. Yeah,
they said, you only two bucks from lunch yesterday. That's
(10:55):
what they said when they were loading this up. So
around eight am, the more earning Uh, these workers there
started noticing that there was smoke and vapors coming out
of the ship. Uh. So there was some kind of
a fire going on. No one knew how it started
or what happened. There are some people anecdotally it was
a cigarette. Uh that was not in the could have
(11:16):
been that wasn't in the official report, which also wouldn't
be surprising. Well, what I saw. I saw it later
on Chuck that um, the fact that these things were
in those paper sacks, that if they were heating up,
they were just going to continue to heat up. Being
packed tightly in the hold of this unventilated ship. Um,
they were just going to get warmer and warmer. And
it's possible they that the the ammonium nitrate caused the
(11:40):
paper sack to combust, catch fire, spread to other paper sacks,
and then you had a positive feedback loop where it
just kept getting The fire kept getting bigger and bigger,
and crucially very important, hotter and hotter. Right, So the
captain sees this happening. There are people kind of pouring
in and looking around at what's going on. The captain says,
(12:02):
batting down these hatches. The police harps over him and
start pumping steam in there, which apparently was a method
at the time to put out a fire on a
ship when you didn't want to ruin the cargo, as
opposed to just blasting it with a fire hose, which
would cause all the stuff to just brick up like
Portland's cement. He starts pumping steam in there and that
(12:26):
just started heating. You know, everyone knows steam is gonna
heat stuff up, so that just started and the moisture
made a bad situation a lot worse really quickly. Yeah,
I get the impression that had The captain's name was
Captain Charles de guillabond Um. He had he made the
decision to just go ahead and let the cargo be
ruined and have the fire put out with fire hoses.
(12:48):
This all might never have happened, but it was. And you,
I mean, I understand where he was coming from. He
didn't want to ruin the cargo if he didn't have to,
because steaming out a fire aboard a ship was a
h an accepted firefighting technique. It works, and it could
conceivably save a lot of the cargo. So it's not
like he just made this ridiculous, stupid mistake. It's just
(13:11):
in hindsight, it was probably the decision that led to
this catastrophe. Yeah, I mean, I think more than anything,
it's like you said, it was the time when there
was not much regulation and it's sort of in the
dawning of the chemical age. People just didn't know right.
And Plus also at the time, um Texas City had
a volunteer fire department UM which I would guess, wouldn't
(13:33):
have quite as much jurisdiction and could be told by
a captain like no, no, no, just go away, like
I'm I'm gonna handle this myself, rather than being like,
uh no, we're going to put the fire out on
on your ship. Yeah, it's a good point. So the
steam is making things worse. Uh. It pumped into the
holds and everything's heating up. Everything's getting moist and like
(13:56):
we said, moisture is no good for this stuff, and
it did started to convert to these solid masses and
you know, there's gonna be gas releasing, and it's building
up all this pressure because they had battened down the
hatches and covered them with tarps, and it so much
so that it blew these hatch covers off at about
eight thirty in the morning. It's crazy. Just that alone
would have been spectacular, and I'm sure it was um.
(14:19):
But when those hatches blew off, all the smoke that
had been kind of stuck in the hole inside the
ship started billowing out. And the thing apparently about ammonium
nitrate burning is it produces really kind of mesmerizing colored
smoke from one of the um witnesses. It was apparently
salmon orange and purple, and so the smoke coming out
(14:41):
of it um started to attract people like like onlookers
who were like, what's what's going on? I want to
go see this giant, weird fire that's going on down
at the port, And something like three hundred people, including
entire families, kids from the local school came over. Um,
all sorts of people just kind of stopped what they
(15:01):
were doing and came to watch this weird fire at
the port. And apparently KGB C out of Galveston, which
is just ten miles down the coast out in the
Gulf of Mexico. Um, they were warning people to stay away,
but apparently that just alerted more people that there was
something going on who went down to go check it
out themselves. Yeah, so they knew that there was a
(15:24):
big problem. At this point, they did call the firefighters
in and a tugboat to maybe try and get that
thing out of there. And Uh, at this point, like
you said, the heat was just so great that even
a fire hose isn't gonna do much. It's kind of
just vaporizing when it hits it because of the massive
amounts of heat, and then you know, this whole thing
started eight. At eight thirty is when the hatches blue.
(15:47):
And then at nine the thing exploded. And we're gonna
kind of list through a pretty horrifying list of um
of impacts from like distances like a size of a
graph in Denver, Colorado picked up this explosion UM and
this is again in the southernmost part of Texas, right, Yeah,
(16:11):
like they felt it in Louisiana, you know, like three
thousand foot fire bombs and cargo flying up in the air.
So yeah, the the enormous amount of energy that I
was talking about that was released by this tons of
ammonium nitrate UM in retrospect I think has been the
I saw compared to a two point seven kiloton blast,
(16:35):
which would put this blast of this ship blowing up
at somewhere on the order of about one third no
I'm sorry, one five of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb which
just completely leveled that city. This was about a fifth
that size, so it was still a really substantial, enormous blast.
(16:55):
And one of the first effects that had is that
it blew this Liberty Ship, this huge World War two
era cargo ship, a couple of thousand feet into the
air in multiple pieces to just shower out downward as
hot metal shrapnel UM onto the surrounding city. And that's
not accounting for the shrapnel that immediately blew outward as
(17:17):
those gases expand, um expanded right into all of those
onlookers and the people who are fighting the fire around
the port. Yeah, there was. They had a couple of
two ton anchors. One of those went about a mile
and a half away in the air. Uh. Like we said,
you could feel it in Louisiana. That was um, a
mon Santo and a Union carbide, two different chemical plants
(17:40):
kind of right beside it. They were just flattened, basically
just not even there anymore. Yeah. I saw that one
of the warehouses, Warehouse zero at the port, which was
I think the one that was closest to the ship. UM.
This historian from Houston, I think, said that it just
disappeared like it was just gone, like it wasn't there
any longer. Like the word disintegrate works in a lot
of the instances when you're describing what happened to a
(18:02):
lot of the structures and people who were around this
this blast. Well, yeah, I mean that's the obvious thing.
You know, there were hundreds of onlookers, there were people
that worked there, There were all twenty eight members of
the fire department. They were all killed basically instantly. Anyone
within that zone was killed instantly. Some people, like you said,
(18:24):
just just not even able to recover enough body parts
to identify humans at that point. Yeah, that proved to
be a real problem. So like, um, first of all,
the fact that the entire fire department apparently one There
was one survivor from the fire department, but he was
out of town at the time, That's why he survived.
But the whole fire department and all of their equipment
was immediately wiped out. UM. One of the problems was
(18:47):
with an explosion like this in a place like this
is that it ruptures lines and pipes and all of
those petrochemicals that are being refined suddenly catch fire. So
now you have these out of control fires in buildings
and structures that are left standing, UM, and you no
longer have a fire department or any fire equipment to
put it out for a little while. So the the
(19:09):
immediate impact out outside of the blast was also the
fires that were um lit just right after this too. Well,
I mean, you've got you know, you've got the metal shrapnel,
but then you've also remember there were peanuts and twine
and cotton and all this stuff. So that's these are
like fireballs being launched, basically starting fires all over the place.
(19:32):
It wasn't just in the immediate area. And like you said,
because the fire department was then out of commission. That's
that's real trouble. Yeah, So it took a little while
for um more AID to show up. But apparently this
this explosion was so bad and the catastrophe was so
great the Army, Navy, Coastguard, Marines, Texas National Guard, and
(19:52):
then firefighters from surrounding UH cities all came out to
help man. And this wasn't just like putting this Mike,
we fire out, but also like trying to you know,
rescue people from rubble. Like there's really a lot that
we could sit here and say. But if you have
a computer in front of you, like just look up
(20:13):
pictures um from the Texas City explosion. Of it's just
unreal what happened to like enormous steel buildings just turned
into like twisted metal. And this is like, you know,
the middle of a work day, so there were people
trapped all over the place um in this debris. So
(20:33):
there was a huge um rescue operation that had to start,
but it was delayed because most of the people who
were attasked with that kind of thing had all been
killed in the initial blast. Yeah. So remember earlier we
said that there were three ships there. Uh, this one
blows up, and obviously, you know it's a it's a
(20:56):
full on like eleven scene at this point with just
how chaotic it is, people are uh not noticing that
right next door, the S S. High Flyer also remember,
was loaded with this stuff and also with sulfur which
makes it become unstable, and this thing had been unlodged.
I mean, I'm surprised. It's just the integrity of these
(21:19):
ships is the only reason that those weren't just blown
to bits too. Like it was kind of right next
to it, and and it was still intact at least,
and it was blown from its mooring zo and drifted
over and kind of attached itself to the Wilson be Keen,
which was again in the slip next to it. And
I think there were some crew members aboard in there
(21:41):
that I guess we're just protected by that thick steel,
right from what I understand, And they were kind of
still doing their things for a little while, and they
were finally because the the high Flyer caught fire as well. Um,
they were finally forced out by the smoke. Because this
is some noxious, noxious smoke. This isn't I mean, this
is just like wood burning smoke. This is some really
(22:02):
bad chemical smoke that can mess you up. It's crazy
that the sailors stayed aboard for an hour, but they're
finally forced off a ship. But they tell people like, hey,
this is this is on fire. Everybody's like, have you
seen the other problems we have over here? And the
fire department just got basically vaporized. Um, So the fire
was allowed to continue on the high Flyer for hours,
(22:24):
hours and hours like that. That blast happened at nine
twelve am, and it wasn't until the afternoon that somebody
else rediscovered the fire aboard the high Flyer and started
to kind of like raise the alarm about this. Um. Still,
this is such a chaotic scene that there wasn't anything
(22:44):
immediately done about it. And it wasn't until eleven PM
that they're finally like, oh, this is a really this
is a bad jam because not only do we have
a thousand tons tons of ammonium night trade aboard the
high flyer, there's that sulfur you mentioned, Chuck, and like
you said, it makes it even more un stable. And
that you know how um ammonium nitrate oxidizes things. Sulfur
(23:06):
is like food to that stuff is for it oxidizes sulfur.
It's just like piling on this oxidizing fuel to make
the blast even more energetic. So it would it would
be a really big problem if the high fire blew up.
So they brought in some tug boats in a fireboat
I think from Galveston, and started to try to take
(23:27):
it out of the berth um to tug it out
to see to let it like burn out or blow
up or whatever it was gonna do. But I guess
it was stuck so fast that um that they couldn't
get it out. Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know,
this thing was not I guess just sort of wedged
in there from that first explosion. And I think they
(23:49):
worked on it for a couple of hours. They started
at about eleven p m. And then it looks like
by one am they had stopped that process and at
one tin and this is now in April seventeen, you know,
early next morning, Uh, the high Flyer exploded as well,
and this was even more violent. Um. The only I mean,
(24:11):
that's not a saving grace at all, because everything was
already leveled. But the only reason it didn't cause a
more death and more destruction, sadly is because everything was
already destroyed and most people were already dead. Yeah. And
plus also they knew enough by this time that they
needed to clear the area that there wasn't anything they
could do, so everybody who was working in the rescue
operation was told to leave. So there I just I
(24:34):
don't know if there were any more deaths from the
high Flyer blowing up. But the problem was is that
any fires that might have been put out were re lit,
and other structures that may have been spared from the
initial blasts were now leveled or caught fire or both.
So it was a big problem that the high Flyer
blew up as well. Uh, it sunk the Wilson Kinge too,
(24:55):
did it sunk it? Um? And it was it was yeah,
I can only imagine too. Also if you survived that
first one to have another blast like that, even when
you were away from and you knew was coming, would
just do something to the nerves that would be really
difficult to recover from. Yeah, for sure, you want to
take a break. Yeah, we'll take a little break and
(25:16):
we'll talk about sort of the results of the devastation
and a couple of other incidents right after this. Okay,
(25:50):
so chuck. UM. One thing that we didn't say was
that the initial explosion by the Grand Camp created like
a feteen foot tidal wave that washed inland and UM.
People died almost in creative ways in this disaster, and
(26:11):
one of those ways was, UM, those petrochemicals. I think
there's a molasses refinery that started to get mixed in
that kept the petrochemicals burning in the water when it
mixed with them. When this tidal wave blew out, UM,
when it blew in, I'm sorry, it was on fire.
So it actually caught people on fire. It caught people
(26:32):
on fire on the way back out to sea. And
people who survived the initial blasts were actually swept out
and drowned from this too. There were people who died
in airplanes that had come around to kind of circle
the area. UM, and we're blown out of the sky. Um.
There were people who died in buildings that collapsed. There
were people who died from shrapnel falling out of the
(26:54):
sky and killing them even though they were miles away.
Like there were there was so much death than destruction
that it's really difficult to get across what happened to
this poor little ports city that hadn't done anything to anybody,
that just suddenly blew up. Yeah. In the end, Uh,
the official death toll was close to six people, hundred
(27:19):
and thirteen of which were just vaporized. No trace was
ever found of a hundred and thirteen people. UH, casualties
up to five thousand. The numbers kind of vary, but
anywhere from thirty undred to five thousand. And you know,
Texas City was not a very big place. It was
about sixteen thousand strong. So this was just devastating to
(27:41):
the city. Uh, into the region. Um. It took about
a week to put out all these fires, and I
think a full month plus to recover whatever bodies they
could recover at that point. Yeah, the final body wasn't
found until mid May. UM. The there was there were
people who were never um, like you said, accounted for
(28:05):
there were there were the converse of that was true too,
there were parts of people that were never identified. UM.
And one of the accounts that I read was like
I was saying, was written by UH, I think a
University of Houston historian UM named Cheryl Lowers doorf ross
(28:27):
in UM the he in the Journal Houston History. But
she recounts somebody UM mentioning a woman who was trying
to identify her husband who was lost in the disaster,
and she had to sort through hands. They had a
collection of hands that UM, this woman was trying to
figure out which one belonged to her husband. And like,
(28:49):
that's just nuts to hear. But if you could even
begin to put yourself into that woman's shoes, the reality
of that, yes, of being in that room, of like
looking at different hands, and then also not just the
horror of of that, of of like having to look
through body parts that may or may not be your husband's,
but then the self doubt, like is that my husband's hand,
Like I don't remember what it looked like, you know,
(29:10):
like that just your mind messing with you on top
of the horrific experience that you're already undergoing. But she
was one of many, because something like sixty one um
people I believe were interred without being identified, but there
their remains were um kind of assembled and uh and
(29:33):
and put together in a memorial service that was attended
by something like thousands of people, I believe, So, Chuck,
So if there was sixteen thousand people and that many
people were hurt or killed by this blast, you can
imagine how quickly this little town was overwhelmed with all
these casualties. And so they were getting people like every
which way, trucking them over to Galt, Galveston, like getting
(29:54):
them wherever they could, whatever hospital they could find. But
very quickly the high school gym was taken over to
serve as a field hospital, and then shortly after that
the morgue. And one of the stories that stuck out
to me was the boy Scouts were pressed into service
to basically help out however they could. And these poor
little like like teenage and preteen Scouts are like working
(30:17):
in this makeshift morgue in their high school gym. Like,
imagine the impression that had on them the rest of
their life, you know, I know, isn't that crazy? Like
every aspect of this story is just nuts it's very sad. Yeah,
and of course the the financial loss was huge, UM
about a hundred million dollars in property loss five million
(30:37):
and loss petroleum products and that's about seven hundred million
and three point five billion in today dollars. I think
there is UM sort of buried beneath the berms there
as a memorial park where sixty three unidentified victims are buried. Yeah,
that's what I was talking about. Yeah, and there's that
(30:59):
anchor that we talked about. I don't know if it
was the one that actually blew the mile and a
half away, but at least one of the anchors is
uh is a monument at the park along with UM
a scarred propeller from the high flyer at the entrance
to the port there at Texas City. Yeah. So that
UM that funeral procession that they had that attracted I
think something like five thousand mourners. UM was a real
(31:21):
like community effort. UM. There was something like fifty plus
funeral homes from twenty eight different cities that all participated,
and each of these sixty three unidentified people were there
remains I should say, we're put in their own individual
caskets and buried in the Memorial Park, which is still
you know there that that park is still there with
(31:42):
the anchor and everything. Um, but it was. It's just
it's such an enormous, weird catastrophe and just such a
devastating thing, especially looking back seventy years to read about.
But when you do read about it, if you can
just kind of put yourself in mind of what that
was like, if you know, trying to recover from that,
it's it's astounding that Texas City did recover. A lot
(32:05):
of people moved um and just said not only like,
do I think the city is never going to come
back from this? I don't know if I can come
back from this, But the city actually did come back,
and they did build back from what I understand, even
bigger than before, which is how that BP refinery that
ended up blowing up that became the most profitable and
VP's entire company. Um. Because the city built back even
(32:28):
better than before. That's great. It is great. I mean
not great that it exploded again in two thousand five, obviously,
but great that they were had to stick to it
nous to come back as a city. So you know,
obviously following something like this, there's gonna be a lot
more regulation going on. The US is gonna step up
federally and say, hey, wait a minute, we really need
(32:50):
to take a look at how we're handling these chemicals,
how we're storing these things, how we're shipping these things. Uh.
And a lot of changes were made here and around
the world. But it's not to say that that completely
prevented this from happening again, because in Beirute just last
year in August, there was another big cargo of ammonium
(33:10):
nitrate that had been sitting in a warehouse for seven years.
It's no one is exactly sure whyatt ignited this time,
but there was a dock worker that said that there
were fireworks stored nearby, and they did find thousands of
kilograms of fireworks recovered from a warehouse at that port.
And this explosion was you know, it was a crater
(33:32):
about four hundred and sixty ft wide, and you know,
it was about as big as the Texas City blasts.
I So I saw both. I saw that it was
about as big, and I saw that it was about
half the size. But I mean that even a half,
you know. But so yeah, go look at video that
what's astounding about that Beirute blast is there happens to
be people who are filming when it happened, because there
was a fire. I remember when it happened. Yeah, so
(33:54):
you've seen that that like that white cloud, that's that
water vapor expanding right and the you can't see it,
but there's nitrous oxide gas in there as well. Um,
so imagine twice that size. That's that would probably be
about the size of that first Texas City blast in nine. Yeah.
(34:15):
I mean I remember seeing it on the news and
I don't remember if they mentioned Texas City, but um yeah,
I mean this is stuff that was just stored down
there for like seven years, soaking up that that warm,
kind of moist Mediterranean breeze. Uh. Not the way you
should handle and store the stuf now. And like the
story behind is kind of interesting, Like the was started
(34:36):
in Georgia, not our Georgia, but the Republic of Georgia.
Um on way en route to Mozambique, and the apparently
the owners were like, we're not making enough money on
this this trip, so we're gonna divert over to um
Bay route and pick up some more freight. And the
crew said, no, we're not gonna do it's gonna make
the weight dangerous. So they balked port feat started racking up,
and the owners apparently just decided to abandon the crew,
(34:58):
the ship, and the cargo. The cargo once it was impounded,
should have been sold off, but it wasn't. Instead, it just,
like you said, sat there, stored incorrectly for six years
until something caused it to blow up, which is I mean,
just the the idea that it was just negligence that
led to that catastrophe is it's even worse. I think
(35:19):
that's something that's missing from the Texas City disaster there.
There wasn't really any negligent act. Maybe a mistake or
a bad choice, but no one was particularly negligent about it.
So I think that's it kind of makes the Beirute
last even worse that people were supposed to be doing
stuff that they didn't do and a lot of people
died as a result. Yeah. I think the BP refinery
(35:41):
in two thousand five, they had to pay out about
fifty million bucks for that one after they did a
a little safety audit and in that safety audit um
they found it and this was before the blast. Actually
they did a safety audit and they found that a
lot of people that worked at this plant, um it says,
came to work with quote an exceptional degree of fear
(36:02):
of catastrophic incidences. Yeah, incidents in quote. That's a little
bit of a ocean nightmare. Everything that I've read about
that was that that was the direct result of BP
cutting safety in favor of higher profit margins. That that's
what happened. That's what allowed this plant to deteriorate. And
the machinery just didn't work. But they traced this explosion.
(36:22):
This is an oil refinery explosion. It had nothing to
do with ammonium nitrate. But the does I think whatever
whatever chemical they put in gas to boost the octane level.
They turned a machine on that does that, and somehow,
like all these components to the gasoline started vaporizing out
into the air. It started shooting out of this tower
(36:44):
because the pressure was overloaded and there was so much
gas vapor in the air that somebody had a pickup
truck running nearby and it got sucked up into the
air and take and the engine started revving, and that's
actually what ignited the whole thing. All of this gas
vay for this pickup truck sucking in gas molecules that
were just vaporized in the air around it. Crazy in
(37:06):
Texas City. Again, it's crazy. So you got anything else?
I got nothing else. Well, if you want to know
more about the Texas City disaster, you can go look
that up UM. I would strongly recommend reading UM Cheryl
Lowers door for ross Is Changing Lives and a Heartbeat
(37:27):
Journal article. And also big shout out to fire Engineering
dot Com they had a good one and then the
Local twelve fifty nine the Texas City Firefighters Union UM
has a really comprehensive overview of the Texas City disaster too,
so maybe check those out for even more details. And
since since I said that, it's time for a listener mail, Yeah,
(37:51):
I'm gonna call this, uh, well, I'm gonna call it
what Ryan called it. Well, I'm dumb, but I'm over it. Hey,
it's a long time. First time. I thought i'd tell
you you had me duped for a long time. When
I first started listening to the show, so a few
years ago, and probably for a year after that first episode,
I honestly thought there was a list of keywords that
(38:12):
Josh referred to towards the end of the episode, whenever
he says, well, since I said blank, it's time for
listener mail for an embarrassing this is very cute. For
an embarrassingly long time, I really thought that the blank
word was from a predetermined master list, and that you
had revealed that list of words to the audience in
an early episode. I guess, like the magic word inhouse, Yeah,
(38:39):
was that what it was? Yeah? This guy was to
really love Pee's Playhouse. I started listening to increasing the
older episodes and hopes that I would hear that list
or catch a trend toward the words used. Josh's transition
with that statement at the end of every episode is
just so smooth. Hey, there you go. It wasn't until
one episode, when Josh's word was so mundane o common
(39:00):
it's probably the or if or something along those lines,
that I finally realized there is no list. I had
been fooled. Fell from his eyes and he was fly, Well,
since you said scales, those random words are just that random.
Actually felt a bit disappointed when I realized this, but
it actually took some of the mystery out of the show.
But I'm over it now. Whether or not it's good
(39:21):
to admit I've been fooled by this for a long
time is up for debate. But the meaning to tell
you about this for a while. I hope you think
of me every time Josh transitions to listener mail. From
now on, I totally will take care and keep doing
what you're doing because it's a fantastic show. And since
I said show dot dot dot what that's great? That
is from Ryan Peschel. Thanks Ryan, Thanks for getting in
(39:43):
our heads like that. Apparently we got in your heads too,
so it's only fair, don't you think, Chuck. Yeah, And
just right then, I didn't think we had a listener
mail and then look what pops up. Ryan Pecial saves
the day again. And only Ryan knows what I'm talking about.
I just ruined his life again. He's back in the game. Uh.
If you want to get in touch with us and
(40:03):
try to get in our heads like Ryan did, so
we have to think of you every time we say
something about listener mail or what have you, you can
write to us send us an email to Stuff podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or
(40:25):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,
and this is stuff you should know. It's about to
(00:25):
say natural disaster edition, but unnatural disaster edition. Industrial disaster
is what they call these human caused. In fact, from
what I saw what we're going to talk about today,
the main thing we're talking about today is the largest
industrial disaster in United States history? Still, oh still, yes,
what's seventy almost seventy five years on? Man, sad this
(00:50):
is a big one. Yeah, everything about this was really big,
but in basically all the wrong ways. Um, We're gonna
talk today about a disaster called the Texas City explosion,
and sadly you might say which one, because there's been
multiple massive explosions in Texas City. One of the reasons
(01:11):
why is because Texas City is has made a name
for itself as one of the premier petrochemical ports in
the United States and indeed possibly the world. I think
it was um up until World War Two, it was
like the fourth largest port in Texas, But I think
since World War Two um, it's grown even more. And
(01:33):
I know for a little while there, BP had a
refinery that was its most profitable oil refinery in the world,
which is really saying something. I mean, that's a big deal.
BP is an enormous company with multiple refinery so you know,
for the biggest one, the most profitable one to be
in Texas City. That kind of put Texas City on
(01:54):
the map in some circles. Yeah. So Texas City is
above the Gulf of Mexico, and like you said, it's
a port town founded in the late eighteen hundreds by
some Minnesota hunters and they said, you know what, I
think we can set up shop here. I think we
can dig up a canal, set up a rail line.
We've got some really good deep water, and we could
(02:14):
be a good shipping port. I want to know how they, like,
what what conversation led to that, Like what hunting trip
ends up in you basically building a port town in
a city that's about as far away from your home
as you can get in the same country. Yeah, I
mean there were some real go getters, I guess. Yeah,
I guess. So they couldn't just relax and kill animals.
(02:38):
Oh god, Uh so that's what happened to Texas City.
I mean, that's how it was kind of founded, and
it was like think refineries, think warehouses and chemical plants. Uh.
World War two comes around in the military, of course
as well, will be sort of controlling this area for
a while because it's pretty valuable port for US, and
(02:59):
we're going to ship munitions in and out of here.
World War two comes and goes, and then after the war,
about a year and a half after the war, it
is run by civilians again. And let's just say that
it was a little more of a relaxed scene than
it was when the military was running the show. Yeah,
they the military ran like a tight ship basically. Um.
(03:22):
And yeah, well there's just a big difference between when
the military is running a port and when the port's
run by just a whole bunch of different private companies,
you know what I'm saying. In Minnesota hunters exactly. So Um.
That's not to say it was just some loosey goosey
um place or anything like that, but just comparatively speaking. Uh.
And one of the one of the other things that
(03:44):
Texas City had going against it on the morning of
April is that there weren't really a lot of standards
and regulations for handling chemicals, and then we didn't have
an enormous grasp on just how chemicals worked at that time. Um,
and so all of this, all of these things kind
(04:06):
of came together is kind of slightly lax oversight and
just kind of lack much more relaxed attitude toward cargo
and then a lack of awareness about just what kind
of dangers different cargoes pose just kind of set things
up for to take a bad turn. Yeah, So on
the morning of April six, there were three ships docked
(04:27):
in the port um. There was most notably the S S.
Grand Camp, which was it was a it was a
military ship at one point, but I think we gave
it to France as like a hey, sorry, Europe is
kind of destroyed, why don't you take this ship and
just use it for whatever you want to do. And
(04:48):
it was converted to a cargo ship, which is which
it was on the day of April six, And it
was beside the S S. High Flyer, And that was
beside the third one named after somebody, what was that one?
The Robert Keene or the William Keane. Oh wait, a minute,
which one was it? Well, it was the Wilson bee
(05:10):
Key even better, right, the Billy Keen as they called it. Yeah,
and I believe all three of those were liberty ships, right, Yeah,
they were World War two ships and they were I
think the SS high Flyer was being fixed at the
time but was still loaded down with stuff, as was
the Grand Camp. And will sort of detail what was
(05:30):
in the cargo because it's all very very key. Yeah,
it's really important. So for five days leading up to
April sixt m Steve Doors, I think that's how you
say it, but basically dock hands. I don't know why
you wouldn't just say dock hands, you know, but the
Steven Doors, um man, I hope I'm saying that correctly, Chuck.
They had loaded up the Grand Camp with dred tons
(05:54):
of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and uh these were in one
hundred pound paper sack x akin to the kind of
sex that you would buy like Portland's cement in these days. Right. Um,
There's some other cargo, seisal, twine, peanuts, there's some machinery,
there was some cotton. There was sixteen cases of ammunition,
(06:14):
I think, like for small arms. Ammunition um, but for
the most part it was a lot of ammonium nitrate.
And the same went for the s S High Flyer too,
which as you said, was in the next birth. It
was loaded with a thousand tons of ammonium nitrate and
then also very crucially two thousand tons of sulfur, and
(06:34):
all of these were also in those same hundred pound
paper bags. So at the time, like I was saying,
people didn't realize like this is this was a it
was a big deal that there was that much ammonium
nitrate just sitting around in this port at that time. Yeah,
it's a it's a crystal like solid. It's white um.
(06:54):
A lot of times it's used for nitrogen for agricultural fertilizer, uh,
But if you combine it with fuel oils, it can
be very explosive and actually used for that for like
mining and construction and stuff like that. But it's not
like you know, if you tap the side of the
bag it's going to explode. It's pretty safe as long
(07:16):
as it's all on the up and up and it's
being stored properly. But if it starts to absorb moisture,
then it's sort of like Portland's cement. Again, it's just
gonna harden to a block. And then if that thing
is in a solid block, it's going to be just
a little bit more volatile and a little bit more
dangerous if ignited. Yeah. And I mean like it's not
(07:36):
even considered flammable as far as I know, and certainly
in n it wasn't considered flammable because if you walked
up to some of this this ammonium nitrate, these pellets
and just held the lighter to them, they wouldn't catch fire.
That's not really what they do. What they do is
they oxidize things. They basically create free radicals, like we
talked about in the free Radical episode Yeah, um, which
(07:58):
sets off like a chain reaction. Um. And because they oxidize,
they concentrate and condense and produce basically oxygen where it
was an otherwise present. When when that that is combined
with the fire, it makes a big time fire. Um.
So that's bad enough, right, Like if you set them
(08:18):
off like it'll it'll combust, or it will help something
else combust more efficiently and more more um at a
higher temperature. But the problem, the big problem with ammonium
nitrate is there is a point where it can reach
a high enough heat that it itself decays and degrades.
And when that happens, it splits into two gases, nitrous
(08:39):
oxide and water vapor, which you're like, well, that's that's great.
You know, it just gets super duper high off of
one and the other one. It just makes you a
little moist. Maybe so, maybe so in small enough amounts.
But when this happens in a large enough amount, especially
when this ammonium nitrate is in one big melted block, uh,
(09:00):
the chain reaction can happen much more efficiently. And when
those gases are UM are produced when the when the
thing decays and separates UM, they expand really quickly, and
that produces an explosion UM and the forces the energy
that's released from an explosion of ammonium nitrate decaying and
(09:20):
converting into nitrous oxide and water vapor is monumental, like
compared to atomic bomb blast. Basically, if you have enough
of it, say tons and a thousand tons and a
couple of ships to sitting import. All right, that's a
great place for cliffhanger. I think I think so too.
All Right, we'll be right back after this, alright, So
(10:11):
this stuff, the cargo arrived by train to Texas City,
and it was probably already heating up a little bit
on this train and maybe already getting to the point
where it was a little I don't know about unstable,
but volatile at least. And the it gets transferred to
the ship, it continues to sort of heat up, and
(10:34):
the crew and everything, Like you said, there wasn't a
lot of awareness about kind of anything like this at
the time, So to them it was just another cargo hold.
They might have said, like, you know, be careful with
the stuff, guys, or maybe not even that, but they
definitely didn't know, like heat bad for this stuff. Yeah,
they said, you only two bucks from lunch yesterday. That's
(10:55):
what they said when they were loading this up. So
around eight am, the more earning Uh, these workers there
started noticing that there was smoke and vapors coming out
of the ship. Uh. So there was some kind of
a fire going on. No one knew how it started
or what happened. There are some people anecdotally it was
a cigarette. Uh that was not in the could have
(11:16):
been that wasn't in the official report, which also wouldn't
be surprising. Well, what I saw. I saw it later
on Chuck that um, the fact that these things were
in those paper sacks, that if they were heating up,
they were just going to continue to heat up. Being
packed tightly in the hold of this unventilated ship. Um,
they were just going to get warmer and warmer. And
it's possible they that the the ammonium nitrate caused the
(11:40):
paper sack to combust, catch fire, spread to other paper sacks,
and then you had a positive feedback loop where it
just kept getting The fire kept getting bigger and bigger,
and crucially very important, hotter and hotter. Right, So the
captain sees this happening. There are people kind of pouring
in and looking around at what's going on. The captain says,
(12:02):
batting down these hatches. The police harps over him and
start pumping steam in there, which apparently was a method
at the time to put out a fire on a
ship when you didn't want to ruin the cargo, as
opposed to just blasting it with a fire hose, which
would cause all the stuff to just brick up like
Portland's cement. He starts pumping steam in there and that
(12:26):
just started heating. You know, everyone knows steam is gonna
heat stuff up, so that just started and the moisture
made a bad situation a lot worse really quickly. Yeah,
I get the impression that had The captain's name was
Captain Charles de guillabond Um. He had he made the
decision to just go ahead and let the cargo be
ruined and have the fire put out with fire hoses.
(12:48):
This all might never have happened, but it was. And you,
I mean, I understand where he was coming from. He
didn't want to ruin the cargo if he didn't have to,
because steaming out a fire aboard a ship was a
h an accepted firefighting technique. It works, and it could
conceivably save a lot of the cargo. So it's not
like he just made this ridiculous, stupid mistake. It's just
(13:11):
in hindsight, it was probably the decision that led to
this catastrophe. Yeah, I mean, I think more than anything,
it's like you said, it was the time when there
was not much regulation and it's sort of in the
dawning of the chemical age. People just didn't know right.
And Plus also at the time, um Texas City had
a volunteer fire department UM which I would guess, wouldn't
(13:33):
have quite as much jurisdiction and could be told by
a captain like no, no, no, just go away, like
I'm I'm gonna handle this myself, rather than being like,
uh no, we're going to put the fire out on
on your ship. Yeah, it's a good point. So the
steam is making things worse. Uh. It pumped into the
holds and everything's heating up. Everything's getting moist and like
(13:56):
we said, moisture is no good for this stuff, and
it did started to convert to these solid masses and
you know, there's gonna be gas releasing, and it's building
up all this pressure because they had battened down the
hatches and covered them with tarps, and it so much
so that it blew these hatch covers off at about
eight thirty in the morning. It's crazy. Just that alone
would have been spectacular, and I'm sure it was um.
(14:19):
But when those hatches blew off, all the smoke that
had been kind of stuck in the hole inside the
ship started billowing out. And the thing apparently about ammonium
nitrate burning is it produces really kind of mesmerizing colored
smoke from one of the um witnesses. It was apparently
salmon orange and purple, and so the smoke coming out
(14:41):
of it um started to attract people like like onlookers
who were like, what's what's going on? I want to
go see this giant, weird fire that's going on down
at the port, And something like three hundred people, including
entire families, kids from the local school came over. Um,
all sorts of people just kind of stopped what they
(15:01):
were doing and came to watch this weird fire at
the port. And apparently KGB C out of Galveston, which
is just ten miles down the coast out in the
Gulf of Mexico. Um, they were warning people to stay away,
but apparently that just alerted more people that there was
something going on who went down to go check it
out themselves. Yeah, so they knew that there was a
(15:24):
big problem. At this point, they did call the firefighters
in and a tugboat to maybe try and get that
thing out of there. And Uh, at this point, like
you said, the heat was just so great that even
a fire hose isn't gonna do much. It's kind of
just vaporizing when it hits it because of the massive
amounts of heat, and then you know, this whole thing
started eight. At eight thirty is when the hatches blue.
(15:47):
And then at nine the thing exploded. And we're gonna
kind of list through a pretty horrifying list of um
of impacts from like distances like a size of a
graph in Denver, Colorado picked up this explosion UM and
this is again in the southernmost part of Texas, right, Yeah,
(16:11):
like they felt it in Louisiana, you know, like three
thousand foot fire bombs and cargo flying up in the air.
So yeah, the the enormous amount of energy that I
was talking about that was released by this tons of
ammonium nitrate UM in retrospect I think has been the
I saw compared to a two point seven kiloton blast,
(16:35):
which would put this blast of this ship blowing up
at somewhere on the order of about one third no
I'm sorry, one five of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb which
just completely leveled that city. This was about a fifth
that size, so it was still a really substantial, enormous blast.
(16:55):
And one of the first effects that had is that
it blew this Liberty Ship, this huge World War two
era cargo ship, a couple of thousand feet into the
air in multiple pieces to just shower out downward as
hot metal shrapnel UM onto the surrounding city. And that's
not accounting for the shrapnel that immediately blew outward as
(17:17):
those gases expand, um expanded right into all of those
onlookers and the people who are fighting the fire around
the port. Yeah, there was. They had a couple of
two ton anchors. One of those went about a mile
and a half away in the air. Uh. Like we said,
you could feel it in Louisiana. That was um, a
mon Santo and a Union carbide, two different chemical plants
(17:40):
kind of right beside it. They were just flattened, basically
just not even there anymore. Yeah. I saw that one
of the warehouses, Warehouse zero at the port, which was
I think the one that was closest to the ship. UM.
This historian from Houston, I think, said that it just
disappeared like it was just gone, like it wasn't there
any longer. Like the word disintegrate works in a lot
of the instances when you're describing what happened to a
(18:02):
lot of the structures and people who were around this
this blast. Well, yeah, I mean that's the obvious thing.
You know, there were hundreds of onlookers, there were people
that worked there, There were all twenty eight members of
the fire department. They were all killed basically instantly. Anyone
within that zone was killed instantly. Some people, like you said,
(18:24):
just just not even able to recover enough body parts
to identify humans at that point. Yeah, that proved to
be a real problem. So like, um, first of all,
the fact that the entire fire department apparently one There
was one survivor from the fire department, but he was
out of town at the time, That's why he survived.
But the whole fire department and all of their equipment
was immediately wiped out. UM. One of the problems was
(18:47):
with an explosion like this in a place like this
is that it ruptures lines and pipes and all of
those petrochemicals that are being refined suddenly catch fire. So
now you have these out of control fires in buildings
and structures that are left standing, UM, and you no
longer have a fire department or any fire equipment to
put it out for a little while. So the the
(19:09):
immediate impact out outside of the blast was also the
fires that were um lit just right after this too. Well,
I mean, you've got you know, you've got the metal shrapnel,
but then you've also remember there were peanuts and twine
and cotton and all this stuff. So that's these are
like fireballs being launched, basically starting fires all over the place.
(19:32):
It wasn't just in the immediate area. And like you said,
because the fire department was then out of commission. That's
that's real trouble. Yeah, So it took a little while
for um more AID to show up. But apparently this
this explosion was so bad and the catastrophe was so
great the Army, Navy, Coastguard, Marines, Texas National Guard, and
(19:52):
then firefighters from surrounding UH cities all came out to
help man. And this wasn't just like putting this Mike,
we fire out, but also like trying to you know,
rescue people from rubble. Like there's really a lot that
we could sit here and say. But if you have
a computer in front of you, like just look up
(20:13):
pictures um from the Texas City explosion. Of it's just
unreal what happened to like enormous steel buildings just turned
into like twisted metal. And this is like, you know,
the middle of a work day, so there were people
trapped all over the place um in this debris. So
(20:33):
there was a huge um rescue operation that had to start,
but it was delayed because most of the people who
were attasked with that kind of thing had all been
killed in the initial blast. Yeah. So remember earlier we
said that there were three ships there. Uh, this one
blows up, and obviously, you know it's a it's a
(20:56):
full on like eleven scene at this point with just
how chaotic it is, people are uh not noticing that
right next door, the S S. High Flyer also remember,
was loaded with this stuff and also with sulfur which
makes it become unstable, and this thing had been unlodged.
I mean, I'm surprised. It's just the integrity of these
(21:19):
ships is the only reason that those weren't just blown
to bits too. Like it was kind of right next
to it, and and it was still intact at least,
and it was blown from its mooring zo and drifted
over and kind of attached itself to the Wilson be Keen,
which was again in the slip next to it. And
I think there were some crew members aboard in there
(21:41):
that I guess we're just protected by that thick steel,
right from what I understand, And they were kind of
still doing their things for a little while, and they
were finally because the the high Flyer caught fire as well. Um,
they were finally forced out by the smoke. Because this
is some noxious, noxious smoke. This isn't I mean, this
is just like wood burning smoke. This is some really
(22:02):
bad chemical smoke that can mess you up. It's crazy
that the sailors stayed aboard for an hour, but they're
finally forced off a ship. But they tell people like, hey,
this is this is on fire. Everybody's like, have you
seen the other problems we have over here? And the
fire department just got basically vaporized. Um, So the fire
was allowed to continue on the high Flyer for hours,
(22:24):
hours and hours like that. That blast happened at nine
twelve am, and it wasn't until the afternoon that somebody
else rediscovered the fire aboard the high Flyer and started
to kind of like raise the alarm about this. Um. Still,
this is such a chaotic scene that there wasn't anything
(22:44):
immediately done about it. And it wasn't until eleven PM
that they're finally like, oh, this is a really this
is a bad jam because not only do we have
a thousand tons tons of ammonium night trade aboard the
high flyer, there's that sulfur you mentioned, Chuck, and like
you said, it makes it even more un stable. And
that you know how um ammonium nitrate oxidizes things. Sulfur
(23:06):
is like food to that stuff is for it oxidizes sulfur.
It's just like piling on this oxidizing fuel to make
the blast even more energetic. So it would it would
be a really big problem if the high fire blew up.
So they brought in some tug boats in a fireboat
I think from Galveston, and started to try to take
(23:27):
it out of the berth um to tug it out
to see to let it like burn out or blow
up or whatever it was gonna do. But I guess
it was stuck so fast that um that they couldn't
get it out. Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know,
this thing was not I guess just sort of wedged
in there from that first explosion. And I think they
(23:49):
worked on it for a couple of hours. They started
at about eleven p m. And then it looks like
by one am they had stopped that process and at
one tin and this is now in April seventeen, you know,
early next morning, Uh, the high Flyer exploded as well,
and this was even more violent. Um. The only I mean,
(24:11):
that's not a saving grace at all, because everything was
already leveled. But the only reason it didn't cause a
more death and more destruction, sadly is because everything was
already destroyed and most people were already dead. Yeah. And
plus also they knew enough by this time that they
needed to clear the area that there wasn't anything they
could do, so everybody who was working in the rescue
operation was told to leave. So there I just I
(24:34):
don't know if there were any more deaths from the
high Flyer blowing up. But the problem was is that
any fires that might have been put out were re lit,
and other structures that may have been spared from the
initial blasts were now leveled or caught fire or both.
So it was a big problem that the high Flyer
blew up as well. Uh, it sunk the Wilson Kinge too,
(24:55):
did it sunk it? Um? And it was it was yeah,
I can only imagine too. Also if you survived that
first one to have another blast like that, even when
you were away from and you knew was coming, would
just do something to the nerves that would be really
difficult to recover from. Yeah, for sure, you want to
take a break. Yeah, we'll take a little break and
(25:16):
we'll talk about sort of the results of the devastation
and a couple of other incidents right after this. Okay,
(25:50):
so chuck. UM. One thing that we didn't say was
that the initial explosion by the Grand Camp created like
a feteen foot tidal wave that washed inland and UM.
People died almost in creative ways in this disaster, and
(26:11):
one of those ways was, UM, those petrochemicals. I think
there's a molasses refinery that started to get mixed in
that kept the petrochemicals burning in the water when it
mixed with them. When this tidal wave blew out, UM,
when it blew in, I'm sorry, it was on fire.
So it actually caught people on fire. It caught people
(26:32):
on fire on the way back out to sea. And
people who survived the initial blasts were actually swept out
and drowned from this too. There were people who died
in airplanes that had come around to kind of circle
the area. UM, and we're blown out of the sky. Um.
There were people who died in buildings that collapsed. There
were people who died from shrapnel falling out of the
(26:54):
sky and killing them even though they were miles away.
Like there were there was so much death than destruction
that it's really difficult to get across what happened to
this poor little ports city that hadn't done anything to anybody,
that just suddenly blew up. Yeah. In the end, Uh,
the official death toll was close to six people, hundred
(27:19):
and thirteen of which were just vaporized. No trace was
ever found of a hundred and thirteen people. UH, casualties
up to five thousand. The numbers kind of vary, but
anywhere from thirty undred to five thousand. And you know,
Texas City was not a very big place. It was
about sixteen thousand strong. So this was just devastating to
(27:41):
the city. Uh, into the region. Um. It took about
a week to put out all these fires, and I
think a full month plus to recover whatever bodies they
could recover at that point. Yeah, the final body wasn't
found until mid May. UM. The there was there were
people who were never um, like you said, accounted for
(28:05):
there were there were the converse of that was true too,
there were parts of people that were never identified. UM.
And one of the accounts that I read was like
I was saying, was written by UH, I think a
University of Houston historian UM named Cheryl Lowers doorf ross
(28:27):
in UM the he in the Journal Houston History. But
she recounts somebody UM mentioning a woman who was trying
to identify her husband who was lost in the disaster,
and she had to sort through hands. They had a
collection of hands that UM, this woman was trying to
figure out which one belonged to her husband. And like,
(28:49):
that's just nuts to hear. But if you could even
begin to put yourself into that woman's shoes, the reality
of that, yes, of being in that room, of like
looking at different hands, and then also not just the
horror of of that, of of like having to look
through body parts that may or may not be your husband's,
but then the self doubt, like is that my husband's hand,
Like I don't remember what it looked like, you know,
(29:10):
like that just your mind messing with you on top
of the horrific experience that you're already undergoing. But she
was one of many, because something like sixty one um
people I believe were interred without being identified, but there
their remains were um kind of assembled and uh and
(29:33):
and put together in a memorial service that was attended
by something like thousands of people, I believe, So, Chuck,
So if there was sixteen thousand people and that many
people were hurt or killed by this blast, you can
imagine how quickly this little town was overwhelmed with all
these casualties. And so they were getting people like every
which way, trucking them over to Galt, Galveston, like getting
(29:54):
them wherever they could, whatever hospital they could find. But
very quickly the high school gym was taken over to
serve as a field hospital, and then shortly after that
the morgue. And one of the stories that stuck out
to me was the boy Scouts were pressed into service
to basically help out however they could. And these poor
little like like teenage and preteen Scouts are like working
(30:17):
in this makeshift morgue in their high school gym. Like,
imagine the impression that had on them the rest of
their life, you know, I know, isn't that crazy? Like
every aspect of this story is just nuts it's very sad. Yeah,
and of course the the financial loss was huge, UM
about a hundred million dollars in property loss five million
(30:37):
and loss petroleum products and that's about seven hundred million
and three point five billion in today dollars. I think
there is UM sort of buried beneath the berms there
as a memorial park where sixty three unidentified victims are buried. Yeah,
that's what I was talking about. Yeah, and there's that
(30:59):
anchor that we talked about. I don't know if it
was the one that actually blew the mile and a
half away, but at least one of the anchors is
uh is a monument at the park along with UM
a scarred propeller from the high flyer at the entrance
to the port there at Texas City. Yeah. So that
UM that funeral procession that they had that attracted I
think something like five thousand mourners. UM was a real
(31:21):
like community effort. UM. There was something like fifty plus
funeral homes from twenty eight different cities that all participated,
and each of these sixty three unidentified people were there
remains I should say, we're put in their own individual
caskets and buried in the Memorial Park, which is still
you know there that that park is still there with
(31:42):
the anchor and everything. Um, but it was. It's just
it's such an enormous, weird catastrophe and just such a
devastating thing, especially looking back seventy years to read about.
But when you do read about it, if you can
just kind of put yourself in mind of what that
was like, if you know, trying to recover from that,
it's it's astounding that Texas City did recover. A lot
(32:05):
of people moved um and just said not only like,
do I think the city is never going to come
back from this? I don't know if I can come
back from this, But the city actually did come back,
and they did build back from what I understand, even
bigger than before, which is how that BP refinery that
ended up blowing up that became the most profitable and
VP's entire company. Um. Because the city built back even
(32:28):
better than before. That's great. It is great. I mean
not great that it exploded again in two thousand five, obviously,
but great that they were had to stick to it
nous to come back as a city. So you know,
obviously following something like this, there's gonna be a lot
more regulation going on. The US is gonna step up
federally and say, hey, wait a minute, we really need
(32:50):
to take a look at how we're handling these chemicals,
how we're storing these things, how we're shipping these things. Uh.
And a lot of changes were made here and around
the world. But it's not to say that that completely
prevented this from happening again, because in Beirute just last
year in August, there was another big cargo of ammonium
(33:10):
nitrate that had been sitting in a warehouse for seven years.
It's no one is exactly sure whyatt ignited this time,
but there was a dock worker that said that there
were fireworks stored nearby, and they did find thousands of
kilograms of fireworks recovered from a warehouse at that port.
And this explosion was you know, it was a crater
(33:32):
about four hundred and sixty ft wide, and you know,
it was about as big as the Texas City blasts.
I So I saw both. I saw that it was
about as big, and I saw that it was about
half the size. But I mean that even a half,
you know. But so yeah, go look at video that
what's astounding about that Beirute blast is there happens to
be people who are filming when it happened, because there
was a fire. I remember when it happened. Yeah, so
(33:54):
you've seen that that like that white cloud, that's that
water vapor expanding right and the you can't see it,
but there's nitrous oxide gas in there as well. Um,
so imagine twice that size. That's that would probably be
about the size of that first Texas City blast in nine. Yeah.
(34:15):
I mean I remember seeing it on the news and
I don't remember if they mentioned Texas City, but um yeah,
I mean this is stuff that was just stored down
there for like seven years, soaking up that that warm,
kind of moist Mediterranean breeze. Uh. Not the way you
should handle and store the stuf now. And like the
story behind is kind of interesting, Like the was started
(34:36):
in Georgia, not our Georgia, but the Republic of Georgia.
Um on way en route to Mozambique, and the apparently
the owners were like, we're not making enough money on
this this trip, so we're gonna divert over to um
Bay route and pick up some more freight. And the
crew said, no, we're not gonna do it's gonna make
the weight dangerous. So they balked port feat started racking up,
and the owners apparently just decided to abandon the crew,
(34:58):
the ship, and the cargo. The cargo once it was impounded,
should have been sold off, but it wasn't. Instead, it just,
like you said, sat there, stored incorrectly for six years
until something caused it to blow up, which is I mean,
just the the idea that it was just negligence that
led to that catastrophe is it's even worse. I think
(35:19):
that's something that's missing from the Texas City disaster there.
There wasn't really any negligent act. Maybe a mistake or
a bad choice, but no one was particularly negligent about it.
So I think that's it kind of makes the Beirute
last even worse that people were supposed to be doing
stuff that they didn't do and a lot of people
died as a result. Yeah. I think the BP refinery
(35:41):
in two thousand five, they had to pay out about
fifty million bucks for that one after they did a
a little safety audit and in that safety audit um
they found it and this was before the blast. Actually
they did a safety audit and they found that a
lot of people that worked at this plant, um it says,
came to work with quote an exceptional degree of fear
(36:02):
of catastrophic incidences. Yeah, incidents in quote. That's a little
bit of a ocean nightmare. Everything that I've read about
that was that that was the direct result of BP
cutting safety in favor of higher profit margins. That that's
what happened. That's what allowed this plant to deteriorate. And
the machinery just didn't work. But they traced this explosion.
(36:22):
This is an oil refinery explosion. It had nothing to
do with ammonium nitrate. But the does I think whatever
whatever chemical they put in gas to boost the octane level.
They turned a machine on that does that, and somehow,
like all these components to the gasoline started vaporizing out
into the air. It started shooting out of this tower
(36:44):
because the pressure was overloaded and there was so much
gas vapor in the air that somebody had a pickup
truck running nearby and it got sucked up into the
air and take and the engine started revving, and that's
actually what ignited the whole thing. All of this gas
vay for this pickup truck sucking in gas molecules that
were just vaporized in the air around it. Crazy in
(37:06):
Texas City. Again, it's crazy. So you got anything else?
I got nothing else. Well, if you want to know
more about the Texas City disaster, you can go look
that up UM. I would strongly recommend reading UM Cheryl
Lowers door for ross Is Changing Lives and a Heartbeat
(37:27):
Journal article. And also big shout out to fire Engineering
dot Com they had a good one and then the
Local twelve fifty nine the Texas City Firefighters Union UM
has a really comprehensive overview of the Texas City disaster too,
so maybe check those out for even more details. And
since since I said that, it's time for a listener mail, Yeah,
(37:51):
I'm gonna call this, uh, well, I'm gonna call it
what Ryan called it. Well, I'm dumb, but I'm over it. Hey,
it's a long time. First time. I thought i'd tell
you you had me duped for a long time. When
I first started listening to the show, so a few
years ago, and probably for a year after that first episode,
I honestly thought there was a list of keywords that
(38:12):
Josh referred to towards the end of the episode, whenever
he says, well, since I said blank, it's time for
listener mail for an embarrassing this is very cute. For
an embarrassingly long time, I really thought that the blank
word was from a predetermined master list, and that you
had revealed that list of words to the audience in
an early episode. I guess, like the magic word inhouse, Yeah,
(38:39):
was that what it was? Yeah? This guy was to
really love Pee's Playhouse. I started listening to increasing the
older episodes and hopes that I would hear that list
or catch a trend toward the words used. Josh's transition
with that statement at the end of every episode is
just so smooth. Hey, there you go. It wasn't until
one episode, when Josh's word was so mundane o common
(39:00):
it's probably the or if or something along those lines,
that I finally realized there is no list. I had
been fooled. Fell from his eyes and he was fly, Well,
since you said scales, those random words are just that random.
Actually felt a bit disappointed when I realized this, but
it actually took some of the mystery out of the show.
But I'm over it now. Whether or not it's good
(39:21):
to admit I've been fooled by this for a long
time is up for debate. But the meaning to tell
you about this for a while. I hope you think
of me every time Josh transitions to listener mail. From
now on, I totally will take care and keep doing
what you're doing because it's a fantastic show. And since
I said show dot dot dot what that's great? That
is from Ryan Peschel. Thanks Ryan, Thanks for getting in
(39:43):
our heads like that. Apparently we got in your heads too,
so it's only fair, don't you think, Chuck. Yeah, And
just right then, I didn't think we had a listener
mail and then look what pops up. Ryan Pecial saves
the day again. And only Ryan knows what I'm talking about.
I just ruined his life again. He's back in the game. Uh.
If you want to get in touch with us and
(40:03):
try to get in our heads like Ryan did, so
we have to think of you every time we say
something about listener mail or what have you, you can
write to us send us an email to Stuff podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or
(40:25):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
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