Last week, Amanda Vance, curator of the Texas City Museum, noticed an uptick in online chatter about the 1947 Texas City Disaster.
That’s interesting, she observed. Usually, talk of the disaster tends to occur in April, around its anniversary.
It quickly became clear why that incident -- the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history -- suddenly became a topic of discussion: 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate had exploded in the Port of Beirut, killing more than 150. Seventy-three years earlier, at the Port of Texas City, a fire broke out in the cargo hold on board the French-owned S.S. Grandcamp, which was loaded with about 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. As firefighters and the curious converged dockside the morning of April 16, the ship exploded, sending molten chunks of it into the city’s petrochemical complex. Buildings were flattened, planes were knocked out of the sky, the nearby Monsanto Chemical Company plant was destroyed and oil storage facilities went up in flames. Hours later, the nearby High Flyer, also loaded with ammonium nitrate, exploded. In all, nearly 600 were killed.