Rick's Story Of The Week

[reevesr1]

I recently got an email about a refinery explosion in Texas this month. Got me thinking about home, and a big explosion in my hometown. Most of you probably remember the news stories about the BP explosion in Texas City (where I'm from) back in 2005. Not to downplay that disaster, but that's nothing compared to this, back in 1947:

 

The Texas City Disaster

 

Texas City is essentially one big Chemical Refinery. We've been supplying North America and the world with gasoline, kerosene, plastic, antifreeze, etc, etc, for 70 or 80 yrs now. It's also a recovering, albeit slowly enviornmental wasteland. But that's not the story. Read the link, and then read a bit more personal (or at least my dad's personal) account.

 

My dad was in 4th grade when the ship blew up. His school was a couple of miles away. When the ship went, it blew the plate glass window into his teacher's back. It did not kill her, but it took more than one surgery to remove it all. Dad, like everyone else, ran like mad out of the school. My dad went straight to the bike rack to race home, but he sees my uncle Bill's bike at the rack. He waits for a bit, but when Billy does not show up, he races back into the school to look. He gets to the stairs to go to Billy's class, but they were collapsed. So he climbs up what is left and runs to my uncles class. But it is empty. He then starts going through class after class looking, afraid Billy might be hiding somewhere (and probably horrified himself as he's only 10). He can't find him anywhere.

 

As he makes in back down to the 1st level, he comes across one of his classmates with a paper bag, filling it with pencils. The friend says "come on Richard, help. We'll never need to buy pencils again." Dad said he had a hard time liking that kid for a long time afterwards before he finally came to the realization that he was just in shock, like everyone else. Anyway, dad finally gives up and goes to get on his bike to ride home.

 

He said when he got outside it just looked like everything was on fire. At this point no one really knew what was going on. And remember this is not that long after the war. Could we have been attacked.

 

Anyway, more afraid than ever dad pedals like mad (away from the fire) home. There he finds Billy with my grandma. Billy said he ran out of school and just kept running until he got home.

 

One question I never asked my dad, and I don't know why, was how did it feel waiting for his dad to come home? Can you imagine? But come home he did.

 

Everyone from Texas City has a story like that. My grandfather lost a lot of friends in the disaster. ALL the firemen were killed. I grew up in a place with a Memorial that was full of unidentified body parts. Not many of those around.

 

A couple of pieces of trivia:

 

The Anchor from one of the ships ended up almost a mile from the ship. (a FREAKING SHIP ANCHOR FLEW A MILE!)

The Blast was measured on the seismic scale in Denver (estimated at 0.8 of the Hiroshima bomb)

Windows were broken in Houston, 50 miles away

 

And even more interesting, the biggest natural disaster in the US was the 1900 Galveston Hurricane (same county, just across the bay):

1900 Galveston Hurricane

 

Nice safe place I come from.

 

If you google The Texas City Disaster or the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, there is tons of pretty interesting reading.

[lonefisher]

totally missed this post rickr. thats a crazy story thanks for sharing it. Must have been an surreal feeling back in that time especially considering communication of the incident would have been extremely slow compared to todays standards...... Would have been pretty damn scary for adults let alone young children.....

 

Don't know if you heard about the halifax explosion in 1917 but up here there was a short historical re inactment thing that used to be played on a regular basis on TV when I was young..... even then it seemed quite scary......

heres the link to that story sounds like there is some eerily similar factors

 

http://www.cbc.ca/halifaxexplosion/

 

check it out..... makes me glad safety standards do a pretty good job of making sure these things don't happen much anymore.... knock on wood