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Texas City Disaster

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Many people don’t really know what happen on the morning of April 16, 1947. The Texas City disaster of 1947 was one of the deadliest days in Texas history, but many still don’t know what happened on that dark day. The morning of the blast was very calm, a slight rain and mild temperatures in Texas City. Texas City was a small town located right in between Galveston and Houston. The town began to thrive in the late 1940’s due to the production of oil and special chemicals. Open jobs were everywhere in the small city which led to the increase of the population. Dockworkers were loading a special fertilizer called Ammonium Nitrate on board the “Grandcamp.” Ammonium Nitrate was used in World War Two by the U.S. Army. The special fertilizer was …show more content…
The Grandcamp served in World War Two. The U.S. offered the ship to France for restoration.The Grandcamp had docked in the Texas City Port five days earlier. It had made several steps along the way including Belgium, Normandy, and Cuba. Just about 2,000 tons of fertilizer was already onboard but they still had to load 800 more tons. As they were loading, dockworkers notice a small plume coming from the cargo, which was eventually started from a cigarette bud. Cigarettes were however banned on the ship due to the alarm of starting a fire. There was no water hoses onboard, it was only just a fire extinguisher. They feared having a water hose onboard would ruin the cargo. The captain ordered them to remove all the hatches from the fertilizer crates. Unfortunately, the fire started to get larger. Dockworkers were forced to leave the ship for safety precautions. The smoke from the fire eventually set off an alarm that was heard from the emergency occupations nearby. Firefighters swarmed to the destination and surrounded the ship. Crew members that were still on board tried to restrict the oxygen, although the fertilizer does not need oxygen to burn. The smoke was described as a, “pretty

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