Munoz, Thomas. "Interview with Thomas Munoz." Telephone Interview. 27 Nov. 2018.
Did the Texas City Disaster have a major impact on any regulations, or were any laws or bills passed in response to the disaster?
“One of the big things that had happened was that it increased safety. It allowed us to look at lessons learned on how we store things, but more importantly it allowed us to understand the consequences—I mean because there was a lot of things that went wrong. You know that thing had burning for a while. So not understanding the process of the product, not having what we call Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) to see how water reacted with the product. What it did is it changed the way we look at chemicals or maritime fires, it really did. The other thing it allowed us to do was how we maintain safe distances not only for the people’s sake but we were able to recognize the potential—understanding your hot zone which is the area of impact, understanding the importance of calculating a risk. If you look at what we have now is what’s called the ERG book, the North American ERG book. It’s an Emergency Response Guidebook that you can look up on your apps and you can download it. You click the name of the product and it’ll tell you, ‘Heads up it doesn’t react well to water or the safe distance is half a mile.’ Remember a lot of the people killed were bystanders. That’s one of the things that has changed the way we do things as far as safety is concerned. Regulations-wise it created a lot of conversation on how to start communicating safety on those types of issues."
Has there been any change to the way that help is given to those in an emergency?
“In a scenario like this there’s what we have now—for a big city like Houston you have enough resources, more than enough. I used to work in Houston for the fire department. We have 102 fire stations in Houston. Galveston we only have three. With that what it does now is it encourages us to have what’s called mutual aid agreements. So having those mutual aid agreements what it means is you recognize real quick that you’re going to run out of resources so surrounding cities come and start helping out. That’s one of the big things now, so things have changed. In the event there is a disaster an explosion like 3000 people more than likely you would have FEMA come up and start helping out along with other non-governmental organizations helping out with the mass casualties. The National Guard might show up too so it depends on what—in a situation like that, that would have been declared a declaration of emergency meaning that everything was wiped out therefore it allows the federal government to come and try to help out."
The Texas City Disaster led to the creation of the Industrial Mutual Aid System. Have there been many situations that have required the Texas City Emergency Management to receive assistance from the IMAS?
“Yes, there have. Most recently we had the Valero explosion. Even though it turned out to be a big fire, that’s when it was activated and everybody showed to help with that. Here in Texas City we have approximately nineteen plants. We have Marathon, Valero, Eastman—say Marathon has three firetrucks, Eastman has one, Texas City Fire Department has four, so what they do is we pull all our mutual aid together, industrial mutual aid to help fight that fire."
Your primary goal is to respond and recover from the effects of a disaster, is there anything you believe could have been done differently in 1947 to have minimized the tragic event?
“I think what could have done better is understanding the consequences of the product, and what I mean by that is understanding, ‘Okay how is the product going to react? What is the potential and the risk of that product? What can go wrong? What is the worst case scenario?’ Being that it was ammonium nitrate having the explosive capabilities would have allowed us to recognize that—studying the product under federal regulations now allows us to recognize what the product is going to do. For one, setting up safety perimeters like, ‘Hey everybody we need you more than three miles away from the area. Firefighters, you got to just let it burn out versus adding water,’ studying the safety zones, advising people to evacuate, stay away from windows. Either shelter in place or leave the premises. Those types of things that understanding the risk manages the risk. Basically looking at what I call the risk management process. One, ‘what is the risk?’ which then equals to ‘what is the threat?’ times ‘how vulnerable is that product?’ and then ‘what are the consequences?’ So if you wanted to write a formula it would be risk, r = t*v*c. Risk equals the threat, so what is the threat here of the product? How vulnerable is it?—well it’s already on fire meaning that this is what we can do to it or how do we act with it, and then c is the consequences. What are the consequences if we don’t take care of this problem and if so what do we know about that problem? I think a lot of times we do what’s called nowcasting—we tend to forecast but nowcasting is, ‘It’s happening right now and this is how we have to react to this.’ So what I would have done different is to understand the product, understand the risk, and the threat, how vulnerable it is, and then understand the consequences and the decision making process."
Seventy one years after the tragic event, can the impact of it still be felt in Texas City?
“I think the impact will always be, at least for me, is that it can happen—I mean there’s no doubt. First of all, industry has changed a lot over the last 71 years. All the plants that I’ve worked with and together with have made big safety mechanisms, huge, that we can utilize. More importantly, the impact that it will have is the fact that we can capture lessons learned and it doesn’t allow us to forget what can happen, and so that in itself keeps us on our toes."
“One of the big things that had happened was that it increased safety. It allowed us to look at lessons learned on how we store things, but more importantly it allowed us to understand the consequences—I mean because there was a lot of things that went wrong. You know that thing had burning for a while. So not understanding the process of the product, not having what we call Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) to see how water reacted with the product. What it did is it changed the way we look at chemicals or maritime fires, it really did. The other thing it allowed us to do was how we maintain safe distances not only for the people’s sake but we were able to recognize the potential—understanding your hot zone which is the area of impact, understanding the importance of calculating a risk. If you look at what we have now is what’s called the ERG book, the North American ERG book. It’s an Emergency Response Guidebook that you can look up on your apps and you can download it. You click the name of the product and it’ll tell you, ‘Heads up it doesn’t react well to water or the safe distance is half a mile.’ Remember a lot of the people killed were bystanders. That’s one of the things that has changed the way we do things as far as safety is concerned. Regulations-wise it created a lot of conversation on how to start communicating safety on those types of issues."
Has there been any change to the way that help is given to those in an emergency?
“In a scenario like this there’s what we have now—for a big city like Houston you have enough resources, more than enough. I used to work in Houston for the fire department. We have 102 fire stations in Houston. Galveston we only have three. With that what it does now is it encourages us to have what’s called mutual aid agreements. So having those mutual aid agreements what it means is you recognize real quick that you’re going to run out of resources so surrounding cities come and start helping out. That’s one of the big things now, so things have changed. In the event there is a disaster an explosion like 3000 people more than likely you would have FEMA come up and start helping out along with other non-governmental organizations helping out with the mass casualties. The National Guard might show up too so it depends on what—in a situation like that, that would have been declared a declaration of emergency meaning that everything was wiped out therefore it allows the federal government to come and try to help out."
The Texas City Disaster led to the creation of the Industrial Mutual Aid System. Have there been many situations that have required the Texas City Emergency Management to receive assistance from the IMAS?
“Yes, there have. Most recently we had the Valero explosion. Even though it turned out to be a big fire, that’s when it was activated and everybody showed to help with that. Here in Texas City we have approximately nineteen plants. We have Marathon, Valero, Eastman—say Marathon has three firetrucks, Eastman has one, Texas City Fire Department has four, so what they do is we pull all our mutual aid together, industrial mutual aid to help fight that fire."
Your primary goal is to respond and recover from the effects of a disaster, is there anything you believe could have been done differently in 1947 to have minimized the tragic event?
“I think what could have done better is understanding the consequences of the product, and what I mean by that is understanding, ‘Okay how is the product going to react? What is the potential and the risk of that product? What can go wrong? What is the worst case scenario?’ Being that it was ammonium nitrate having the explosive capabilities would have allowed us to recognize that—studying the product under federal regulations now allows us to recognize what the product is going to do. For one, setting up safety perimeters like, ‘Hey everybody we need you more than three miles away from the area. Firefighters, you got to just let it burn out versus adding water,’ studying the safety zones, advising people to evacuate, stay away from windows. Either shelter in place or leave the premises. Those types of things that understanding the risk manages the risk. Basically looking at what I call the risk management process. One, ‘what is the risk?’ which then equals to ‘what is the threat?’ times ‘how vulnerable is that product?’ and then ‘what are the consequences?’ So if you wanted to write a formula it would be risk, r = t*v*c. Risk equals the threat, so what is the threat here of the product? How vulnerable is it?—well it’s already on fire meaning that this is what we can do to it or how do we act with it, and then c is the consequences. What are the consequences if we don’t take care of this problem and if so what do we know about that problem? I think a lot of times we do what’s called nowcasting—we tend to forecast but nowcasting is, ‘It’s happening right now and this is how we have to react to this.’ So what I would have done different is to understand the product, understand the risk, and the threat, how vulnerable it is, and then understand the consequences and the decision making process."
Seventy one years after the tragic event, can the impact of it still be felt in Texas City?
“I think the impact will always be, at least for me, is that it can happen—I mean there’s no doubt. First of all, industry has changed a lot over the last 71 years. All the plants that I’ve worked with and together with have made big safety mechanisms, huge, that we can utilize. More importantly, the impact that it will have is the fact that we can capture lessons learned and it doesn’t allow us to forget what can happen, and so that in itself keeps us on our toes."