On April 16th, 1947, two French ships entered the port at Galveston Bay in Texas City. Soon after entering the harbor, smoke was spotted coming from the SS Grandcamp, a ship loaded with nearly 2,000 tons of fertilizer. The fire and the attempts to put it out garnered the attention of the city’s fire department and many spectators near the dock.
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SS Grandcamp
Source: Houston Chronicle, April 1947. |
Giant smoke clouds from one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.
Source: Houston Chronicle, April 1947. |
"At 9:12 a.m., flames shot from the Grandcamp's open hatch and a deafening blast ... blew the ship to pieces, sending a cloud of dense black smoke thousands of feet into the air and scattering the ship's remains across the city. The 2-ton anchor landed more than mile away."3
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The first explosion was so powerful, it registered on seismographs in Denver, Colorado, 1,000 miles away. People in Louisiana also felt the shock, 250 miles away. The nearby Monsanto Chemical Company along with oil and chemical storage tanks were set on fire causing more chaos.
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News headline on the initial estimated death toll. Source: The Galveston Daily News, April 17, 1947
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After the tragedy, approximately 570 people died and several thousand more were injured. The exact number of lives lost can’t be known and might actually be much higher. Most bodies were difficult to identify and some were never found, including all 28 members of the Texas City Fire Department.
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Video footage of a store with its windows blown out from the impact of the explosions. Source: ABC 13 Eyewitness News, April 1947
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John Castaneda, Nicolas Gonzales, Soraida Sosa, Isaac Veloz
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