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