Catalog of Catastrophe

Despite precautions, the manufacture and storage of sophisticated chemicals can occasionally lead to accidental tragedy. Among the major catastrophes of the modern industrial era:

Mexico City, Nov. 19,1984. Shortly before dawn, liquefied-gas tanks exploded at the San Juan Ixhuatepec storage facility operated by state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos. The resulting fire took 452 lives and injured 4,248 in Mexico's largest industrial disaster; 1,000 people are still missing.

Cubatao, Brazil, Feb. 25,1984. Gasoline from a leaky pipeline in this southeast Brazilian town exploded into a giant fireball that killed at least 500 people.

San Carlos de la Rapita, Spain, July 11,1978. An overloaded 38-ton tank truck carrying 1,518 cu. ft. of combustible propylene gas skidded around a bend in the road and slammed into a wall, sending 100-ft.-high flames into a campsite where 780 tourists were eating, sunbathing and swimming. The death toll: 215.

Seveso, Italy, July 10,1976. Between 1 Ib. and 22 Ibs. of poisonous dioxin were released into the atmosphere over an area of 4,500 acres when a chemical reaction at the Hoffman-La Roche plant set off an explosion. More than 1,000 residents were forced to flee, and many children developed a disfiguring rash called chloracne, but no lives were lost.

Flixborough on Humberside, England, June 1, 1974. Britain's biggest peacetime explosion occurred at the Nypro (U.K.) Ltd. chemical plant when a pipe ruptured. The plant produced Caprolactum, which is woven into nylon. The blast killed 28 workers and leveled every building on the 60-acre site.

Ludwigshafen, Germany, July 28,1948. A railway car transporting dimethylether, used in making acetic acid and dimethylsulfate, to the I.G. Farben chemical plant, exploded inside the factory gates. The blast and resulting fire killed 207 people and injured 4,000.

Texas City, Texas, April 16,1947. During the night of April 15, a fire broke out on the Grand Camp, a freighter anchored in the harbor of this port town on Galveston Bay. The Grand Camp carried 1,400 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. At 8 the next morning, the Grand Camp exploded in a blast that rattled windows 150 miles away. Flames leaped 700 ft. to a nearby Monsanto plant that produced styrene, a combustible ingredient of synthetic rubber. Minutes later the Monsanto plant exploded, setting off fires throughout the city. On April 17 the freighter High Flyer, also loaded with nitrates, exploded in the harbor. The toll: 576 dead, 2,000 seriously injured.

Cleveland, Oct. 20,1944. A liquefied-natural-gas tank belonging to the East Ohio Gas Co. developed a structural weakness that led to a huge explosion. The blast and fire killed 131.

Oppau, Germany, Sept. 21,1921. The biggest chemical explosion in German history occurred in a warehouse about 50 miles south of Frankfurt when workers used dynamite to pry loose 4,000 tons of caked ammonium nitrate fertilizer. The blast killed 561 people and leveled houses four miles away.