Remembering Texas City
Imagine an explosion so powerful it blows two light planes out of the sky, kills more than 500 people -- including a number of firefighters incinerated at the scene -- injured more than 7,000 others and destroyed 500 homes. All that happened on April 6, 1947, when the Grandcamp, a French Liberty ship loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer, blew up while docked in the Gulf Coast port of Texas City, Tex. It's considered the worst industrial disaster in American history.The ammonium nitrate that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 weighed two tons; the ammonium nitrate aboard the Grandcamp weighed approximately 2,300 tons.
Texas City comes to mind because of an obit we'll be running shortly for a retired Justice Department lawyer who defended the government against claims growing out of the disaster, claims that totaled more than $200 million. In 1953, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 4-to-3 that the government was not liable under the Federal Claims Tort Act.
By Joe Holley |
April 30, 2008; 11:47 AM ET
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Posted by: Judy in TX | May 6, 2008 6:11 PM
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I remember the explosions at Texas City vividly.
It was 1947, I think, a weekend morning. I was only 7 years old.
My mother woke me up and suddenly the windows rattled in our home.
My father worked at Dow Chemical and he felt sure something in the plant exploded. He left to go to the plant to see if he could help or if it was his unit.
Not so.
It was miles and miles away.
We lived in Freeport, Texas, some 50 or 60 miles away.
There were a series of explosions, some worse than others.
Since it was just after World War II, I understood years later that sabotage was suspected.
Buildings were leveled down by the Texas City docks.
Resources, food, water, etc., were disrupted for weeks and the people of Texas City put up with many privations.
I have a friend now, who lived there as a young woman working for Lipton Tea at the time.
She said it was a nightmare for city residents.
It took a long, long time to clean up and rebuild.