The 1947 Texas City Disaster

America's worst industrial disaster...that you've probably never heard of

I lived in Seabrook, TX, a small seaside town halfway between Houston and Galveston, for ten years between 1997-2007. If you head 17 miles south down Texas Hwy. 146, you reach Texas City, a city notable for being a petroleum and chemical refining hub.

One of the things you get used to living in that part of southeast Texas is the astonishing number of chemical and petroleum refining plants. And these aren’t plants refining benign, harmless chemicals. In some cases, we’re talking about very harmful and exceedingly dangerous chemicals which can and occasionally do create problems for their neighbors.

The occasional explosion or leak will require those nearby to shelter in place until the emergency is remediated. It’s one of the reasons that the Houston area’s air quality is among the worst in the nation- making all that money has some side effects.

While the chemical and petroleum plants have occasional leaks, explosions, and screw-ups of various flavors, Texas and the federal government (usually) keep them on a tight leash. The companies also know that the bad P.R. generated by a severe screw-up could be bad for business.

Part of the reason for that is what happened in Texas City on the morning of April 16, 1947.

On the morning of April 16, 1947, the SS Grandcamp, surrounded by refineries and chemical plants near the Texas City docks, exploded with a force comparable to the Nagasaki atomic bomb, taking the lives of nearly 600 people and injuring thousands more. When a catastrophe like this strikes, reports focus on the number of lives lost, the extent of damages, the estimated cost of reviving the area, and how much the government will contribute to the recovery, with little discussion of the emotional devastation. In the wake of this disaster, some plant workers did not want to return to their jobs and some residents moved away from the industrial city. For those who witnessed the damage to homes and businesses and observed the mangled bodies of the dying and injured, their lives were forever haunted by those harrowing memories.

Today, Texas City is a nondescript wide spot in Hwy. 146. It’s primarily known for having some outstanding high school football teams, a bunch of refineries and chemical plants, and a six-mile-long dike that juts into Galveston Bay. The Texas City dike is a popular spot among fishermen. Honestly, though, there’s not much else there. That much hasn’t changed over the years.

In the aftermath of WWII, Texas City, a sleepy little port town on Galveston Bay, had grown rapidly, its population increasing from 5,000 to 18,000. By 1947, most veterans from Texas City had returned, and more than a few vets from other parts of the country had relocated there for the growing number of jobs. So life was good and getting better for the people in and around Texas City and Galveston County.

That would change in a few seconds on an otherwise quiet April morning.

On the morning of April 16, 1947, Texas City longshoremen on the docks of Pier 0 loaded the last of the ammonium nitrate fertilizer bound for the “war-starved farms of France” aboard the SS Grandcamp. Other cargo included tobacco, cotton, twine, and a few cases of ammunition. Someone noticed smoke coming from the lower part of Hold 4 where 100-pound sacks of fertilizer were stored. The two fire extinguishers on hand were insufficient to suppress the smoke, and Captain Charles de Guillebon did not want the rest of the cargo destroyed by using water. He ordered the smoke and flames extinguished by “having the hatches battened and covered with tarpaulins, the ventilators closed, and the steam system turned on.” Witnesses described the smoke as unusual in color, “‘a pretty, gold yellow color’ [that] attracted many onlookers.”

Galveston’s radio station KGBC warned citizens to stay clear of the fire, but this only raised the curiosity of individuals and families who headed for the docks to witness the “salmon, orange, and purple” colored smoke. Flares and fires at the docks and refineries occurred frequently, and no one considered them a serious safety concern. At that time, bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer did not display any “highly flammable” warning labels. Even though ammonium nitrate was used to make explosives during the war, tests concluded the chemical was safe from explosion while being transported. The only concerns were for the small amount of ammunition on board and the nitric acid fumes from the burning fertilizer.

Of course, Americans who remember the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City will probably recall that the main ingredient of Timothy McVeigh’s bomb was ammonium nitrate. Today we know that ammonium nitrate is a potent and dangerous explosive. Yet, in 1947, it wasn’t treated with the respect it is today.

The compound, previously easy to obtain as a fertilizer, is now highly regulated by the federal government because of its ease of use in explosives and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

[A]mmonium nitrate is also the main component of an explosive called ANFO which stands for Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil. It is an explosive mixture which is used widely in mining. ANFO is composed of 94 percent ammonium nitrate and 6 percent fuel oil. The ammonium nitrate will serve as the oxidizing agent for the fuel. Another interesting fact about this compound is that it is actually hygroscopic. A hygroscopic substance is something that can easily collect water molecules from the environment where it is placed. Because of this reason, ammonium nitrates should not be stored in humid areas since water can easily affect the compound’s explosive function. Ammonium nitrates are now regulated by the government since it is already used to create fertilizer bombs. These are improvised explosive devices that other people use in terrorism.

On the morning of April 16, 1947, none of these thoughts were in the minds of the families who gathered at the docks with the children to see the fire and the very unusual “salmon, orange, and purple” smoke.” Instead, they were captivated by the colors, even as no one grasped the scope of the danger before them.

Before long, the crowd was “two and three deep with sandwiches and soft drinks” in hand. A gathering of about 300 enjoyed the unusual event.

At about 8:30 a.m., the SS Grandcamp sounded an alarm, followed shortly after that by the arrival of the Texas City Volunteer Fire Department’s (TCVFD) 26 men and the Republic Oil Company’s fire-fighting unit. It was the first call for TCVFD’s gleaming new fire truck.

It would also be the last.

Less than an hour later, disaster struck.

At 9:12 a.m., an explosion, heard 150 miles away, ripped through the air forming a mushroom-shaped cloud of toxic smoke that shot 2,000 feet high, carrying chunks of metal and shards of the fractured Grandcamp. The Monsanto Chemical Company complex, reduced to chunks of brick, concrete, and twisted steel beams, “was subjected to an impact equal to 250 five-ton blockbusters [bombs] exploding simultaneously.” Warehouse 0 simply disappeared.

The Grandcamp’s 1.5-ton anchor was thrown two miles away, where it plunged ten feet deep into the ground. The explosion’s force generated a “fifteen foot high tidal wave [that] crashed onto the dock, covering the [men, women, and children].” Some died instantly, while others were pulled into the water and drowned. Many of their bodies were never recovered.

The force of the blast obliterated the 10,419-ton Grandcamp and 32 of its 42-man crew. Unfortunately, all 26 of the responding TCVFD volunteers perished. The one surviving member happened to be out of town that day.

Within moments, the explosion of the Grandcamp transformed Texas City into something far worse than a war zone.

Fragments of the ship hit nearby chemical and refinery tanks and pipes causing numerous explosions and rivers of fire. Six oil tanks ruptured and caught fire at Stone Oil Refinery, and a gasoline tank at Richardson Refining went up in a huge fireball. The explosion destroyed the nearby S. W. Sugar and Molasses Company causing its three storage tanks to collapse and release thousands of barrels faced the challenge of noxious fumes, visually impairing smoke, and intense heat from flaming tanks.

Trudging through knee-high oily water, they searched for victims amidst the wreckage of automobiles and homes, chunks of concrete, and smoldering, twisted steel from refinery structures, and fragments of the Grandcamp.

Flatbed trucks, automobiles, buses, and anything else with wheels transported the hundreds of dead and wounded. “They just piled [the dead] up on the trucks and took ‘em over [to Galveston]. . . Hard to describe. There was just so damn many,” Reed recalled. The look of disbelief showed on his face as he brought to mind the horrific day. Texas City had three clinics and ten doctors who were overwhelmed within minutes of the blast. A nurse recalls, “All of a sudden, the casualties poured in on us, by foot, automobiles, trucks, ambulances, commandeered school buses. There were thousands of them, cut and bleeding.” With so many injured, responders used Texas City’s auditorium and the high school gymnasium as first-aid centers. The next day, the gym became a morgue where survivors entered in groups of twenty to search for their missing loved ones.

The explosion’s force generated a 15-foot tidal wave that crashed onto the dock and covered everyone standing there. Some perished instantly, and some were pulled into the water and drowned. Unfortunately, some of the bodies were never found.

The destruction of the three storage tanks at the S.W. Sugar and Molasses Company mixed

with the “oil, gasoline, benzoyl, propane, and ethyl benzene [that] shot out of ruptured pipes and collapsed storage tanks” from the refineries. Some of the chemicals and molasses that caught fire spread with the rushing waters of the tidal wave and “scalded those who survived the blast and…cremated those who had fallen” in its path.

Upon hearing the explosion, several thousand people on Galveston Island, 14 miles to the southeast, immediately feared communists had set off an atomic bomb or that an earthquake had occurred. They fled from swaying buildings on the island’s east end only to return for shelter through a hail of debris and oil.

The seismograph at Regis College in Colorado incorrectly registered the Grandcamp explosion as an earthquake. Buildings shook, and windows shattered as far north as Baytown, 25 miles north of Texas City up Hwy. 146. Few windows remained intact in Texas City.

Those who’d been near the Grandcamp and had been fortunate enough to survive were in a sorry state. Some had seen their clothes shredded or torn off by the blast, and many shuffled naked and in shock, not knowing what had happened.

Men, women, and children, bloody and blackened by oil, were seen stumbling and crawling towards safety and help. The blast shredded most of their clothing, leaving some naked and shoeless. Frances Alexander left the laundromat and ran toward the explosion; she knew her twelve-year-old little brother had gone to watch the fire. She barely recognized the boy with the misshapen face, a broken arm, and an eyeball out of its socket. When she began crying, he told her, “‘Sister, don’t cry; I’ll be alright. Go see about mother and the others.’”

As if the tragedy of April 16 wasn’t enough, there was more to come.

At 1:10 a.m. on April 17, the S.S. High Flyer, laden with ammonium nitrate ignited by the Grandcamp, exploded, setting off a series of smaller explosions. These explosions sent burning metal debris through the night sky like missiles, causing further casualties, delaying rescue efforts, and starting more fires.

A parking lot 400 meters from the site of the explosion

Teams worked 24/7 hoping to find survivors, but after a couple of days, it became clear that the search had become a recovery effort. It wasn’t until twenty-six days after the Grandcamp explosion that the last body was recovered.

The final death toll was 581. The Grandcamp explosion remains the worst industrial accident in American history. More than 5,000 were injured, with 1,784 treated at 21 area hospitals. In terms of numbers, the Texas City disaster is hard to grasp.

• More than 2,500 survivors suffered injuries like fractures, sprains, hearing, impairment, burns, lacerations, and loss of eyes and/or limbs.

• One of every three homes in Texas City suffered damages so bad they were deemed unlivable.

• Approximately 25,000 people instantly became homeless or jobless.

• One thousand one hundred cars and trucks, 362 freight cars, and three locomotives were destroyed.

• The force of the explosion sent the two-ton anchor from the Grandcamp 1.6 miles inland and buried it 10 feet deep. There’s now a memorial at the site where the anchor landed.

The saddest part of the tragedy was that no one had an opportunity to prepare for it. Everyone was caught unawares.

In a letter to her parents, Lucille Burkhart describes the numerous days of continuous funeral processions, adding, “As sad as the funerals are — there are still sadder situations. . . . One poor woman searching for her husband looked through a whole bucket of hands trying to find even that much of him.”

On June 22, the sixty-three bodies that remained unidentified were buried in individual graves at the newly created Texas City Memorial Cemetery, built exclusively for the disaster victims. Thousands attended, with every race, ethnicity, and religion represented at the services conducted by Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic officiants.

What strikes me as odd about this disaster is that I’d never heard of it before I’d moved to Texas. It was and remains the largest industrial disaster in American history in terms of loss of life, yet it was never taught in any school I attended in Minnesota. Five hundred eighty-one people died instantly, yet I knew nothing about it. That seems the sort of historical event we should be teaching our children.

Texas City is a place long since recovered from its past horrors. Yet, if you ask people about the 1947 explosion, most will talk about it. Few who survived that day remain, but their memories of that terrible day have been passed to their descendants.

You can still see the monument with the Grandcamp’s anchor, 1.6 miles inland from the harbor. If you think about the force required to propel a two-ton anchor almost two miles, it helps explain how 581 people died and more than 5,000 were wounded.

Thankfully, there were lessons learned from the Texas City disaster, chief among them that it’s a good idea to label volatile compounds like ammonium nitrate and to handle them with exreme caution. Of course, the 1947 accident probably could have been prevented with more safety measures, but the significant explosive potential of ammonium nitrate wasn’t fully known then. Still, hindsight makes it easy to pass judgment. The good news is that there’s been no similar accident since 1947, and ammonium nitrate is now tightly regulated.

Except for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, ammonium nitrate has remained a chemical known chiefly to farmers and terrorists. Of course, that’s primarily due to the 1947 Texas City disaster, which I wish we considered important enough to teach our children. But, given the scope and scale of the death and destruction, it’s a history our children should know about, like the destruction of Black Wall Street in Tulsa or the massacre of Blacks in Wilmington, NC.

If we’re not teaching our children about those things, what are we teaching them?

What happened in Texas City on April 16, 1947, was something “terrible” can’t begin to describe adequately. Why do so few Americans know about it?