Boomtown. Texas City Texas April 16 1947

The Grandcamp was just one of hundreds of Liberty Ships that had been built during the course of the Second World War in American shipyards. It had originally been christened the SS Benjamin R Curtis at it's launch in Los Angeles California in 1942. After the war had ended, the the ship had been mothballed in Philadelphia. In 1947 the ship was cosigned to a French shipping line in order to assist with the hauling of cargoes as a part of the massive American aid involved with the Marshall Plan.

On April 16 1947 the Grandcamp was docked at Texas City Texas,taking on a cargo of ammonium nitrate. Ammonium nitrate is used as a fertilizer in agriculture. The fertilizer ammonium nitrate is manufactured in the same process that ammonium nitrate for explosives is made. The fertilizer was being loaded on the Grandcamp in 80 lbs bags. The longshoremen who had loaded the Grandcamp later told accident investigators that many of the bags had been warm to the touch.

Around 8:00 am longshoremen noticed smoke coming from from the hold of the Grandcamp where they had already loaded thousands of bags of the cargo. All fire fighting attempts performed by the crew fail to suppress the fire and and the local fire department was called to assist in the efforts to contain the blaze now raging in the Grandcamp's hold. Every member of the Texas City Volunteer Fire Department responded to the call for help.

The rising cloud of smoke from the fire in the Grandcamp's hold had drawn a large crowd of spectators to the scene. People who had been able to get close enough to the fire had later reported that the water near the hull of the Grandcamp had started to boil due to the high temperature of the fire on board the ship. Of course not many of the people who were that close to the ship that day,lived to report anything.

Boomtown

At 9:12 am the 2300 hundred tons of ammonium nitrate in the Grandcamp's cargo hold reached it's critical temperature threshold and detonated. The resulting blast registered 3.5 on a Richter scale in Denver Colorado,900 miles from Texas City. Windows were shattered in Houston,40 miles away.Two aircraft that had been observing the fire were blown from the sky by the resulting shock wave. Over 1000 buildings and homes were destroyed by the blast and the,Monsanto Chimerical Plant next to the dock was flattened and many of it's holding tanks set ablaze.

( In 1995, Timothy McVeigh would mix 3000 pounds of ammonium nitrate with diesel fuel in the truck bomb that he would use to destroy the Alfred P.Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The Grandcamp had 4.6 million pounds of ammonium nitrate in it's hold.)

Everything within a 1000 yards of the blast was destroyed or set on fire,and the entire volunteer fire department had just died in the explosion of the Grandcamp along with most of the spectators who had come to watch the fire on the ship. The City's four Fire Trucks had also been destroyed. Another ship, the High Flyer had been moored about 600 feet from the Grandcamp,and was also being loaded with ammonium nitrate. It was set on fire by the explosion.

Fire fighting crews from nearby cities had to be rushed to the scene of the catastrophe to fight the fires burning all over what remained of Texas City.

On the High Flyer the crew were trying desperately to save their ship. Due to the uncontrolled fire below deck they were unable to cut the anchor chains that held the ship at the dock and they had to abandon their efforts. Fifteenth hours after the Grandcamp had exploded,the High Flyer blew up destroying a ship anchored next to it. Two more people would perish in this blast.

Most of Texas City and all of it's port facilities were completely and utterly destroyed.The damage was estimated at more than 200 million dollars in 1947 money.That would be close to 3 billion dollars in today's money.At least 581 people were killed as a result of the explosion and subsequent fires. More than 5000 people were injured with more than 3000 of these requiring some form of hospitalization. It was and remains to this day the worst industrial accident to ever occur in the United States.

Lessons were learned from Texas City. Up to that point ammonium nitrate hadn't been seen as a hazardous cargo. That would change forever after Texas City. Fire crews in many port cities would be trained in fighting a ammonium nitrate fire and lives would be saved.To bad it took such a horrendous toll to open people's eyes to the dangers of loading ammonium nitrate for shipment.