Simple negligence can cost a man’s life, and can destroy even an entire city.
One of the largest in the world (and certainly the biggest in America) technological disasters happened because of poor sailor, casually threw a cigarette butt on normal with mean fertilizer. Read the consequences of cigarettes.
The ship of death
April 12, 1947 in the port of Texas city entered a cargo ship “Grandcamp”. With a displacement of 10,000 tons the ship had a length of 135 meters and the width of 17.6 meters. It holds intended for the carriage of ammonium nitrate — a common fertilizer that was transported there without any safety equipment. Residents of the city still did not even know what could do with them this is not a harmless cargo.
Careless sailors
Five days the holds were clogged to the eyeballs with the nitrate. And as the weight of fears did not cause, the captain graciously allowed the sailors to smoke directly during operation. April 16, at 8 o’clock in the morning someone from the staff carelessly threw a cigarette butt at his feet. By 9 am the first mate noticed a fire in the hold, which very quickly turned into a major fire. Extinguish it with water, forbade himself the captain was afraid to spoil the goods.
The start of the disaster
Firefighters arrived at the scene at exactly 9:15 am. And then there was an explosion of unprecedented power. The ship, the captain, the sailors and the fire brigade vanished into thin air. The neighboring court broke anchor and washed ashore. Two vessels broke out, a miracle survivor of the stunned men tried to recover. But our story about the worst man-made disaster America is just beginning.
The city is on fire
At that time, Texas city was the center of petrochemical industry of the American South. The blast and stream of hot shrapnel “Grandcamp” in a few minutes had set fire to the entire city. Do not understand the scale of the disaster people were grabbing for everything, trying to cope with the fire. To the accident site pulled the firemen from the neighboring towns and 11 o’clock in the evening, they somehow destroyed the main seats of fire.
New trouble
But in the morning came two more explosions. The burnt out wicks injured in the first fire ships “Hiflyer” and “Wilson Queen”, also crammed with nitrate. The city erupted with renewed force. Saute the Texas city was only three days after the first explosion.
The city is in ruins
So one cigarette butt has led to man-made disaster, the likes of which America has never seen. Two-thirds of Texas city lay in ruins. In the homes of over forty kilometers from the port povyletali glass, three flying over the city the aircraft was hit by a shock wave in the ocean. The damage amounted to $ 50 million (today this amount is approximately equal to half a billion dollars).
Victims of negligence
With the explosion in the port were killed 581 people, the total number of victims exceeded a half thousand people. Nearly seven thousand were injured, twenty thousand were left without shelter and livelihood, hundreds were missing. Such was the price of cigarette butt thrown by a careless sailor, right under his feet.
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