I'm from the Government and I'm Here to Kill You Read online

  For reasons to be stated later in the report, the committee is of the decided opinion that the United States Government is wholly responsible for the explosions and the resulting catastrophe at Texas City; that the disaster was caused by forces set in motion by the Government, completely controlled or controllable by it.

  —United States House Judiciary Committee, 19541

  ELIZABETH DALEHITE WAS A RELIGIOUS WOMAN, and she had missed her morning prayers. She had spent the day driving her husband, ship’s pilot Captain Henry Dalehite, to visit their daughter, then to the Seatrain Shipping headquarters to receive his new orders. As she parked, she noticed a fire on a ship—a common sight in the busy Texas City harbor, where supplies were being rushed to a recovering postwar Europe.

  She declined when Captain Dalehite suggested that she accompany him to the headquarters. She was worn out by all the driving and wanted to catch up on her prayers. As he strode away, she took out a prayer card that bore a favorite novena.

  A block away, the Texas City Fire Department battled the blaze in the No. 4 hold on the cargo ship Grandcamp, where 2,300 tons of powder in paper bags labeled “fertilizer” were destined for France. On the deck, Fire Chief Henry Baumgartner stood directing twenty-seven volunteer firefighters as they towed hoses toward the intense blaze. Seawater boiled away where it touched the ship’s hull, and bright white flames jetted through an open hatch, shooting a strange orange smoke high into the air. The nearby docks were already crowded with sightseers, including truant school children rallying to see the spectacle. Shipboard fires were common, but this one seemed special.

  It was a special fire. The burning “fertilizer” was bomb-grade ammonium nitrate produced by government ordnance plants, using a patented process for creating waterproof explosives. The Fire Department was standing atop a burning two-thousand-ton bomb.

  Mrs. Dalehite looked up from her novena and saw her husband approaching the Seatrain office. Then the world went blinding white as a shock wave hit, a blow so powerful that it shoved her car into the ditch and blasted her through the window. When she recovered enough to stand, the Grandcamp had vanished, as had the Fire Department. The Seatrain headquarters and most of Texas City were leveled. The docks were an abattoir, a slaughterhouse covered with the bodies and body parts of the sightseers. Flaming debris was descending all over the city; oil tanks and refineries were already roaring with flames.

  Mrs. Dalehite would never see her Captain again; his mangled body was identified by a friend. Although an exact count was impossible due to fragmentation of bodies, around six hundred men, women, and children died in that instant.2

  WHY DID IT HAPPEN?

  Humans instinctively design systems so one error or omission will not kill people; it usually takes multiple mistakes to yield a fatal result. The path to Texas City—the worst industrial accident in American history—was long. So long that one begins to question whether the disaster can properly be classed as an accident. At multiple points, the errors were so reckless that private citizens would have been prosecuted for and convicted of homicide—but the individuals making decisions so recklessly were protected by the cloak of the government’s immunity.

  The chain of events began harmlessly enough. World War II had ended with devastation in much of Europe, as well as in Japan and Korea. Starvation loomed, and it was more efficient to ship fertilizer than food—one pound of fertilizer could produce seven pounds of crops.

  At the same time, mothballed government explosive plants were available; these had been producing treated ammonium nitrate, which, when mixed with TNT, made a powerful yet inexpensive filling for aircraft bombs, artillery shells, and torpedo warheads. Ammonium nitrate could also serve as a useful, if hazardous, fertilizer. If the explosive plants were reactivated to produce ammonium nitrate, the government could solve the food problem overseas while providing stateside jobs. To be sure, as any gardener knows, there are many available fertilizers, all more stable than ammonium nitrate. But ammonium nitrate offered the advantage that it could be produced in massive quantities by already existing factories. The substance produced did, however, have certain disadvantages.

  KNOWN RISKS

  The risks were known. Pure ammonium nitrate is a powerful oxidizer, capable of sustaining violent fires, but unlikely to detonate. Only if mixed with a fuel (Oklahoma City terrorist Timothy McVeigh used fuel oil and nitromethane) does it become an explosive.

  In the investigations that followed the Texas City explosion, government representatives evasively described the ammonium nitrate as produced by a “patented process.” This was correct but incomplete. Patent No. 2,211,736 is titled “Blasting Explosive.” That process involves mixing ammonium nitrate with resin, wax, and petroleum jelly to make an explosive that can be used underwater.

  The additives provided the fuel that turned ammonium nitrate from an oxidizer into an explosive, which was precisely why the munitions plants had manufactured it under the patent during the war and used it to fill bombs and artillery shells. The investigations that followed the disaster established that the optimum mix for explosive purposes would contain 0.75–1.5 percent of additives; the ammonium nitrate mix shipped to Texas City had 0.8 percent, so it fell within the right ratio to produce an effective bomb.

  The risks were known: in 1944, a munitions plant had blown up during manufacture of the patented explosive. When the government began to consider using the substance as fertilizer, the Army asked the three largest civilian explosive manufacturers for advice. Atlas Powder Company and Hercules Powder Company wrote back to stress the “extreme hazard” posed by such a product; the Dupont Company wrote that the company had stopped manufacture entirely: “As a result of this incident and previous explosions in the ammonium nitrate plant, this company discontinued the coating of ammonium nitrate with any organic compound.”3

  The government chose to proceed anyway and to disregard the risks. Afterward, it would be claimed that decision makers believed that mixing the ammonium nitrate with wax and petroleum jelly would make it better fertilizer, since it would be less likely to absorb moisture from the air and form clumps, which would have to be broken up before it could be spread.4 But this alleged decision was never attributed to any specific bureaucrat, so the suspicion remains that production of the mixture was a matter of inertia: the factories were already set up to manufacture the mixture, and no one would take the initiative to suggest changing the arrangements.

  Still, many understood the risks. When the government hired a civilian firm to make the fertilizer at the former ordnance plants, the firm demanded ironclad legal protection. Its contract with the government provided:

  The Government recognizes that the work herein provided for is of a highly dangerous nature, and that its accomplishment under existing conditions will be attendant with even greater risk of damage to property, injuries to persons, and failures or delays in performance due to uncertain and unexpected causes than would normally exist. The Contractor is unwilling to assume said risk for the consideration herein provided. It is therefore agreed that the Contractor shall not be liable to the Government in any amount whatsoever for failure or delay in performance by it or for any damage to or destruction of property or for any injury to or death of persons arising out of or in connection with the work hereunder … 5

  The government had committed to producing a bomb-grade explosive and treating it as if it were harmless fertilizer, despite multiple warnings that it was anything but harmless. So much for the first error in the chain of events that leveled an American city. The chain’s second link was simpler.

  THE SECOND HUMAN ERROR

  The second dangerous decision was to package the explosive in flammable paper bags. To add waterproofing, one of the layers was coated in asphalt, which if heated would melt and soak into the explosive content, adding even more fuel. The melting point of asphalt is fairly high, 175 degrees Fahrenheit for the compound used. At least the bags were unlikely to be exposed to that high a te
mperature, except that …

  The process that creates ammonium nitrate must be carried out under great heat and pressure; the resulting chemical comes out searing hot and should be allowed to cool before packaging. But the orders to the ordnance plants were to rush production at all costs. The ammonium nitrate was poured into bags as it left the production machinery and stacked into railroad freight cars to be rushed to Texas City. Tests found that the ammonium nitrate was being bagged at 190 degrees Fahrenheit and above, more than hot enough to melt the asphalt. A Texas City railroad official later recollected that sometimes a boxcar would arrive with bags so hot that men could not handle them. Others observed charred bags and bags that emitted smoke.

  THE FINAL LINK IN THE LETHAL CHAIN

  In 1947, the government resumed the manufacture of the explosive. During the war, ordnance factories had shipped treated ammonium nitrate packaged in red bags that bore the label DANGEROUS / HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE; but these postwar bags, containing exactly the same substance, were labeled simply FERTILIZER / AMMONIUM NITRATE / NITROGEN 32.5%.6 The railroad industry and the Interstate Commerce Commission required that explosives be shipped with special warning labels and that special written warnings be given to the master of any ship carrying them. By virtue of a new label, shipping would be easier. The explosive was now just fertilizer … inert plant food. When the vice president of the railway that transported the material became suspicious because it was coming from an ordnance plant, a spokesman for the plant assured him that the ammonium nitrate was not an explosive.7 Nothing would be allowed to interfere with its rapid production and shipment.

  Ammonium nitrate, converted to bomb-grade material under a patent for explosives, packaged in flammable, asphalt-coated bags at too high a temperature, given labels that gave no clue that the contents were a fire and explosion hazard … If any private, profit-seeking firm had done all that and deaths resulted, the only question would have been how many counts were in the resulting indictment, which executives were named, and how long were their prison terms. But this was the government.

  ALARM BELLS KEEP SOUNDING

  The first warning came from a supervisor at one of the manufacturing sites: “This stuff is overheating and if we ship it out that way we are looking for trouble. What shall I do about it? But if we cut down [the temperature] I have to tell you that we cannot meet these production schedules.”

  The cabled reply from a “superior officer” was unequivocal: “Production must be met.”8 That attitude held at the highest levels of government. When the Chief Inspector of the Bureau of Explosives warned his superiors that boxcars of the treated ammonium nitrate were bursting into flames, and requested that the material be allowed to cool before loading, he was told that “it is not feasible.”9

  Two weeks later, The Union Bag & Paper Corporation performed tests on the bagging of hot ammonium nitrate and reported to government officials that the bags would break down if the chemical’s temperature was higher than 200 degrees. They made a “strong recommendation” that the product be allowed to cool.10 The company’s recommendation was for naught; nothing changed.

  In March 1947, Col. Carroll Deitrick of the Division of Ordnance listed railroad fires involving the modified ammonium nitrate. Deitrick noted, “This office suspects that the fires may have resulted from the high temperature of the fertilizer in combination with easy ignitability of the duplex paper sack.”11 His memo was filed and ignored.

  THE EXPLOSIONS AND FIRES

  A month later, on the morning of April 16, 1947, the Grandcamp’s holds had been partially loaded with its cargo of ammonium nitrate, and eight stevedores descended into hold No. 4 as the ship’s crane lowered in a load of bags.

  Julio Luna, Jr., was the first to notice the odor of smoke. He called up to ask if anyone was burning paper on the deck before realizing the odor was coming from the cargo underneath his feet. The stevedores began to pull up the sacks—many of which broke in their hands and spilled their contents. After digging through four or five layers, they could see a small fire, about two layers farther down.12

  The stevedores poured two one-gallon bottles of drinking water on the fire without result. They tried a couple of fire extinguishers, but the fire continued to spread. It did not seem to be an emergency. They believed they were standing atop inert fertilizer with the fire probably on wooden brackets under the bags. Soon the acrid smoke forced them out of the hold.

  Sirens moaned, one on the dock and one in the distance, summoning Texas City’s volunteer Fire Department. Twenty-seven of its twenty-eight members showed up to race their engines down to the dock. Not knowing he was dealing with an explosives fire, the Grandcamp’s chief officer resorted to a standard method of fire suppression. Ordering the hatches closed, he directed that hold No. 4 be flooded with steam from the ship’s boilers. If the fire had indeed been burning wood frames below an inert cargo of fertilizer, this would have suffocated the blaze. But ammonium nitrate is a powerful oxidizer; it does not need air to burn. If anything, confinement and the increased pressure accelerated the fire. The first clue that the approach was not working came when the hatch cover blew off.13

  Julio Luna and some other stevedores decided there would be no work on the Grandcamp that day. They loaded into Luna’s car and slowly drove away from the docks. Alerted by the Fire Department sirens, crowds came down to see the bright flames and strange orange smoke.14 Safety Engineer H. B. Williams left the dock area to get gas masks for the firefighters; for the first hundred yards of his drive he had to slowly edge his car through streets filled with incoming spectators.15

  Inside hold No. 4, the lethal mix of ammonium nitrate and petroleum jelly was burning and melting. The molten mix ran down the cargo and pooled in the bottom of the hold while the Fire Department tried to smother the volcano erupting from the hatch.

  A block away, Mrs. Dalehite was saying her novena. Captain Dalehite was approaching the Seatrain offices. Seven blocks away, Julio Luna was driving his friends to a game of pool.

  Somewhere in the burning pool of molten ammonium nitrate and petroleum jelly a bubble expanded with sufficient velocity to start a detonation. In an instant, the Grandcamp’s cargo became an enormous ball of superheated gases expanding at more than fifteen thousand feet per second, forming a massive shock wave that tore the ship’s steel apart and rushed on toward the crowd. The shock wave was heard 150 miles away: the ground tremor felt like an earthquake fourteen miles away in Galveston and broke windows forty miles north in Houston.16

  The Grandcamp vanished into millions of pieces, a giant fragmentation bomb that mowed down the spectators with brutal effectiveness. A Coast Guard investigation later found the following:

  The explosion generated tremendous pressure but appears to have lacked the shattering destructive characteristics of an equivalent amount of a nitro-high explosive. The board’s observations at the scene were that within a radius of one-half mile from Pier “0” the missile pattern was a missile to every 2 square feet. Missiles ranged in size from a rivet head to a portion of the ship’s structure estimated to weigh 60 tons.17

  The Texas City Fire Department was simply vaporized; body parts of four firemen would later be identified, the other twenty-three firemen would remain forever “missing.” The crowds on the waterfront were annihilated in an instant, shredded by a storm of steel fragments hurled into them at five times the velocity of a rifle bullet. Buildings were blown flat, and fires erupted in shattered chemical plants and petroleum storage facilities, where twenty storage tanks were soon in flames.18 Overhead, the blast blew the wings off two sightseeing aircraft, which crashed into the chaos below. The Grandcamp’s 3,200-pound anchor fell to earth more than a mile and a half inland, driven ten feet into the ground.

  The destruction was not yet complete. The explosion had smashed another ship, the High Flyer, moored about six hundred feet away. Hatch covers were torn off and blazing debris descended from the air; its cargo of ammonium nitrate mix likewise caught fire.
Sometime past one in the morning, 961 tons of treated ammonium nitrate detonated. Most of the city’s population was dead or fleeing, so additional deaths were few—they included a Catholic priest who was giving last rites to the dying and a mortuary student who had volunteered to help embalm the dead. The explosion did destroy more of the city’s houses.

  The aftermath was staggering. A quarter of Texas City’s population was killed or wounded.19 The city had only one funeral home, and it could accommodate only a few of the dead. A high school gymnasium was commandeered to house the bodies and body parts for identification. McGar’s Garage became the embalming station. Survivors walked through the gym, looking at bodies and body parts in efforts to identify family members, friends, and coworkers. Students from a mortuary school and some survivors of the blast handled the embalming in the garage, with the floor awash in blood and embalming fluid.

  Fires were still burning a week later; body parts were still being identified a month later. About ten days after the blasts, a surveyor took two sons into the shambles. Decades later, one son, Robert Baer, recalled houses and fences blown to bits as the Baers resurveyed much of the town.

  “The city stunk like hell,” Baer remembered, “the smell of death and rotting flesh.” Bluebottle flies were everywhere, attracted by the hideous smell, laying their eggs wherever rotting flesh could be found. Bob and his brother climbed atop a damaged chemical silo to eat lunch away from the stench … and were confronted by a burned and mummified corpse, its blackened arms reaching into the air.

  “That wasn’t the end of it,” Bob added. “We found pieces of two corpses in the rubble. One was a man, one was a woman, as best we could judge.” Smaller body parts, all that remained of spectators fragmented by the blast and shredded by flying steel, were scattered in every direction.20

  The psychological sequelae remained after Texas City’s physical hell ended. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was not yet a diagnosis, but there can be little doubt that thousands suffered its most severe form. Family members found their loved ones, or parts of them, on the gymnasium floor. The pipe fitter who volunteered to help with embalming was near breaking after days of standing in blood. A husband carried his wife to the doctor, explaining that he couldn’t just lay her down because he was holding her guts in. He then watched her die.21 A funeral home director later recalled a surge in “natural deaths” that went on for months. “People were dying because they had taken all they could stand. They burnt themselves out working in the disaster and they just died.”22