The Texas City Disaster was the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history. The incident took place on April 16, 1947, and began with a mid-morning fire on board the French-registered vessel SS Grandcamp which was docked in the Port of Texas City. The fire detonated approximately 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate and the resulting chain reaction of fires and explosions killed at least 581 people, including all but one member of the Texas City fire department. These events also triggered the first ever class action lawsuit against the United States government, under the then-recently enacted Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), on behalf of 8,485 victims.
Read more about Texas City Disaster: Ships, Explosions, Scale of The Disaster, Firefighting Casualties, Reactions and Rebuilding, Legal Case, Photo Gallery
Famous quotes containing the words texas, city and/or disaster:
“Worn down by the hoofs of millions of half-wild Texas cattle driven along it to the railheads in Kansas, the trail was a bare, brown, dusty strip hundreds of miles long, lined with the bleaching bones of longhorns and cow ponies. Here and there a broken-down chuck wagon or a small mound marking the grave of some cowhand buried by his partners “on the lone prairie” gave evidence to the hardships of the journey.”
—For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“I am more and more convinced that, with reference to any public question, it is more important to know what the country thinks of it than what the city thinks. The city does not think much.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When wine is spilled with accident, death and disaster hasten.”
—Joseph O’Donnell. Clifford Sanforth. Ah Ling, Murder by Television, after he accidentally spills wine on Mrs. Houghland (1935)