Incident
In the mid-afternoon around 14:00, the crew were alerted to a fire onboard burning somewhere in the No. 2 hold. The crew, dockside fire teams and fireboats were unable to extinguish the conflagration, despite pumping over 900 tons of water into the ship, or find the source due to the dense smoke. The water was boiling all over the ship, due to heat generated by the fire.
At 15:50 the order to abandon ship was given, and sixteen minutes later there was a great explosion, cutting the ship in two and breaking windows over 12 km (7.5 mi) away. The two explosions were powerful enough to be recorded by seismographs at the Colaba Observatory in the city. Meteriologists recorded that earth trembled at Shimla,, a city located at a distance of over 1700 km. The shower of burning material set fire to slums in the area. Around two square miles were ablaze in an 800-metre (870 yd) arc around the ship, eleven neighbouring vessels were sunk or sinking and the emergency personnel at the site suffered heavy losses. Attempts to fight the fire were dealt a further blow when a second explosion from the ship swept the area at 16:34. Burning cotton bales fell from sky on docked ships, on dock yard, on slum areas outside the harbour. The sound of explosions was heard as far as 50 miles away. Some of most developed and important parts of Bombay were wiped out because of blast and fire.
Read more about this topic: Bombay Explosion (1944)
Famous quotes containing the word incident:
““It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital.... I would call your attention to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident.””
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“I teazed him with fanciful apprehensions of unhappiness. A moth having fluttered round the candle, and burnt itself, he laid hold of this little incident to admonish me; saying, with a sly look, and in a solemn but quiet tone, “That creature was its own tormentor, and I believe its name was BOSWELL.””
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?”
—Henry James (1843–1916)