Texas City Explosion

[Rookie]

On this date 77 years ago the largest non-nuclear man-made explosion in the history of the world occurred in Texas City Texas.

My mom was 9 years old at the time and lived only 1/2 mile away. Her account is recorded along with other's in a book entitled, I Was There.

A ship was loaded with ammonia nitrate bound for France to help reestablish agriculture after the war. She told me today that the sky turned orange from the fire and civil defense sirens sounded as most of the town's people walked down to the dock to see the fire. Shortly after arrival, her mother remembered leaving the iron on and made them all return home. As they arrived, the ship blew up, caving in their house. She with her mother and sisters ran to the garage to drive to safety only to find a large piece of equipment believed to be a part of the ship had crashed in the driveway blocking escape. My mom remembers the piece being large and red hot but her mother somehow picked it up and moved it out of the way.

Approximately 600 died that day, some bodies never recovered. Multiple firetrucks vaporized. The ship's 2ton anchor was blown over a mile away.

 

[LeftyJason]

Sorry that it happened but you might want to fix the first sentence. It was one of the largest. Largest goes to Halifax I believe.

Largest artificial non-nuclear explosions - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Halifax Explosion - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[BAMCIS]

A true disaster.

https://texasarchive.org/2017_03542

 

[Rookie]

Wow thanks for the correction. I quoted the book relayed by mom today. She is 84 so she may have misread that.

 

[jrassy]

On this date 77 years ago the largest non-nuclear man-made explosion in the history of the world occurred in Texas City Texas.

My mom was 9 years old at the time and lived only 1/2 mile away. Her account is recorded along with other's in a book entitled, I Was There.

A ship was loaded with amonia nitrate bound for France to help reestablish agriculture after the war. She told me today that the sky turned orange from the fire and civil defense sirens sounded as most of the town's people walked down to the dock to see the fire. Shortly after arrival, her mother remembered leaving the iron on and made them all return home. As they arrived, the ship blew up, caving in their house. She with her mother and sisters ran to the garage to drive to safety only to find a large piece of equipment believed to be a part of the ship had crashed in the driveway blocking escape. My mom remembers the piece being large and red hot but her mother somehow picked it up and moved it out of the way.

Approximately 600 died that day, some bodies never recovered. Multiple firetrucks vaporized. The ship's 2ton anchor was blown over a mile away.

Video or it didn’t happen, with a username like yours, dude…
I hope you family endured that shitshow and are doing well with the passage of 77 years. Obviously that is a great memory,historically, to have been through that, y'all badasses.

 

[Rookie]

Lefty, I believe your table shows the Port Chicago explosion was biggest with Texas City being number 2.

 

[sirhrmechanic]

There is a great book on the Halifax explosion. There are still chunks of ship in the 'countryside' above Halifax.

There was another big one in the early 1990's when an oxidizer plant went up in the Southwest somewhere. Was a wierd combination of events including a small fire sparked by welding, a gas line under the plant and the aluminum bins that the oxidizer was stored in. Impacted the US Space and missile program.

Very cool forensic documentary on the explosion was on YouTube at one point. I'll see if I can find it.

I lived near Texas City when I was in TX in the 1990's. There were explosions about once a month that echoed across the bay/ship channel. That explosion must have been horrific!

We had a good thread here on the Beirut explosion. That was another shitshow... illegally stored Ammonium Nitrate, IIRC.

Sihr

 

[sirhrmechanic]

This is the one in Nevada. 1988. For some reason, I thought 1990's:

PEPCON disaster - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This is the 'TV' documentary. But there was a much better one produced as a marketing video by the company that did the forensic analysis of what happened.



Worth the watch!

Cheers,

Sirhr