Judge Alfred S. Gerson

On April 16, 1947, America’s worst harbor explosion occurred in Texas City, Tex., when the French ship Grandcamp, carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer, caught fire and blew up, devastating the town.

An Associated Press article in the April 17 New York Times said: “Much of the boom industrial city of 15,000 population was destroyed or damaged. Property loss will run into millions of dollars. Fires followed the blasts. Poisonous gas from exploding chemicals was reported to be filtering through the area.”

The blast occurred when a small fire, perhaps caused by a cigarette, broke out on the Grandcamp. The captain ordered the ship’s hatches to be shut to protect the cargo of ammonium nitrate from being destroyed by water. The decision caused the fire to grow larger and hotter until it caused the ammonium nitrate to explode.

The Associated Press wrote: “A reporter flying over the scene likened it to bomb destruction of European cities in the recent war. The mushrooming cloud of smoke that arose was described as resembling the aftermath of the atom bombing of Hiroshima.”

The blast was felt in other parts of Texas; there were reports of shattered windows 40 miles away in Houston and 11 miles away in Galveston, where The A.P. said that many people fled “fearing an earthquake.” It registered on seismographs as far away as Colorado.

The fire also spread to a second ship, the High Flyer, which held ammonium nitrate. It burned the entire day and exploded at 1 a.m. on April 17. That explosion caused further damage to the city and destroyed another ship, but, because the city had been evacuated, only two people were killed.

The Grandcamp explosion and resulting fires killed more than 500 people and left 200 others missing. It also caused tens of millions of dollars in damage.

Connect to Today:

In 2005, Texas City was home to another large explosion when a fire and explosion at a refinery owned by the British oil company BP killed 15 workers and injured more than 170 people. In 2010, soon after BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the company agreed to pay a record $87 million federal fine for the 2005 refinery explosion. The Times reported that the penalty “does reflect what many critics have said is a corporate culture that has emphasized speed and profits over safety.”

Soon after the fine was agreed to, residents of Texas City filed a lawsuit against the BP refinery for releasing 538,000 pounds of toxic chemicals into the environment where many children came down with respiratory problems. Despite the refinery’s history as a major employer in the city, several longtime employees supported the suit. BP announced in 2011 that it would sell the refinery.

In your opinion, are environmental and health risks worth the jobs that big companies like BP provide? Using BP as an example, do you think the corporate culture of “profits over safety” is changing as we move ahead? Why or why not?

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