• Explosions and Fires at the Ports of Texas City and Houston:A Comparative Analysis of Waterside-Landside Crises, 1947–2019
• Eric Pearson (bio)

The SS Amoco Virginia on fire at Hess Terminal, November 8, 1959. Photo courtesy of the Houston Fire Memorial.

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At one point during a confused nightmare of efforts to check the roaring flames and rescue the injured, Jesse Caveness, Harris County civil defense director, declared: "If this ship [Amoco Virginia] blows, it will be worse than Texas City."

—"Fire Menaces Oil Tanks in Houston Area," Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov. 9, 1959.

The Houston Ship Channel is one of the busiest seaports in the United States. It extends from a turning basin located approximately four miles east of downtown Houston to the Gulf of Mexico between Galveston Island and Bolivar Peninsula, a distance of fifty-two miles.¹ The channel has been deepened and widened over the decades in order to accommodate increasingly larger vessels to keep pace with the needs of Texas industry. It measures forty feet in depth for much of its length and from three hundred to four hundred feet in width.² In addition to general cargo facilities, the channel is home to major petrochemical plants. The heavy concentration of these oil and gas companies presents the potential danger of explosions and fires, as was seen in 1959 when a major gasoline fire engulfed the tanker Amoco Virginia and in 1979 when the tanker Chevron Hawaii exploded after being struck by lightning [End Page 1] while loading oil. These events caused concern that a chain reaction of explosions among the chemical and petroleum industries that line the ship channel could touch off a disaster similar to the one at Texas City that killed more than five hundred people in 1947—the worst industrial accident in the nation's history.

Historians have not fully explored the links between these disasters and how the lessons learned from them were (or were not) applied toward industrial safety and public welfare. There were varying degrees of carelessness in many of these incidents. Certain questions need to be asked regarding the roles government and industry have played since the Texas City disaster and each of the succeeding explosions and fires at the Port of Houston. What impact did these accidents have on industrial safety, pollution control, and Texas industrialization?

The Texas City disaster started with a Liberty cargo ship named the Grandcamp, which was built in Los Angeles in 1942 and originally named the Benjamin R. Curtis.³ The ship was rather small compared to today's cargo vessels, measuring a length of 423 feet and a gross tonnage (a nonlinear measure of a ship's overall internal volume) of 7,176 tons. The United States transferred ownership of the vessel after the war to the French government, which changed the ship's name. The Grandcamp loaded cargo such as twine, cotton, peanuts, and drilling equipment in Houston prior to arriving in Texas City on April 11, 1947, to load ammonium nitrate fertilizer.⁴ This could not be done in Houston because the loading of ammonium nitrate was banned by the Houston Port Authority.⁵ U.S. Coast Guard regulations did not prohibit the loading of the chemical compound in Texas City due to the fact ammonium nitrate was listed as a "dangerous cargo" and not as an "explosive."⁶

The Port of Texas City in 1947 was home to several large plants, including "the Monsanto Chemical Company, Humble Oil and Refining Co., Stone Oil Co., Republic Oil Refining Company, 11 warehouses, 9 piers, one grain elevator, and two thirds of the residential area of Texas City," according to a Coast Guard report.⁷ Many residential blocks stood adjacent [End Page 2] to the industrial complex and the nearby docks where the Grandcamp was moored.

SS Grandcamp. Moore Memorial Public Library, Texas City.

The Texas City disaster began on April 16, 1947, when a small fire started in one of the cargo holds of the Grandcamp, which contained some two thousand tons of ammonium nitrate in one hundred...

• 德克萨斯城和休斯顿港口的爆炸和火灾：1947-2019 年水边危机的比较分析
• 埃里克·皮尔森（生物）

SS Amoco Virginia于 1959 年 11 月 8 日在赫斯码头着火。照片由休斯顿火灾纪念馆提供。

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哈里斯县民防主任杰西·卡夫内斯 (Jesse Caveness) 曾在努力检查熊熊烈火和营救伤员的混乱噩梦中宣称：“如果这艘船 [ Amoco Virginia ] 被炸毁，它将比德克萨斯城更糟。”

—“休斯顿地区油罐的火灾威胁”，芝加哥每日论坛报，1959 年 11 月 9 日。

Ť他^ h ouston小号髋Ç hannel是在最繁忙的海港之一的美国。它从位于休斯顿市中心以东约 4 英里的转向盆地延伸至加尔维斯顿岛和玻利瓦尔半岛之间的墨西哥湾，相距 52 英里。¹几十年来，该航道不断深化和拓宽，以容纳越来越大的船舶，以满足德克萨斯工业的需求。它的大部分长度有四十英尺深，宽度从三百英尺到四百英尺不等。²除了一般货运设施外，该航道还是主要石化工厂的所在地。这些石油和天然气公司的高度集中带来了爆炸和火灾的潜在危险，正如 1959 年发生的一场大火吞没了油轮Amoco Virginia以及 1979 年雪佛龙夏威夷油轮在被闪电击中后爆炸一样[End Page 1]装油时。这些事件引起了人们的担忧，即沿航道排列的化学和石油工业之间的爆炸连锁反应可能引发类似于 1947 年在德克萨斯城造成 500 多人死亡的灾难——这是美国最严重的工业事故。历史。

历史学家尚未充分探索这些灾难之间的联系，以及从中吸取的教训如何（或未）应用于工业安全和公共福利。许多此类事件都存在不同程度的粗心大意。关于自德克萨斯城灾难以及休斯顿港随后发生的每一起爆炸和火灾以来，政府和行业所扮演的角色，需要提出一些问题。这些事故对工业安全、污染控制和德克萨斯工业化有什么影响？

得克萨斯城灾难始于一艘名为Grandcamp的自由货船，该船于 1942 年在洛杉矶建造，最初命名为Benjamin R. Curtis。³与今天的货船相比，这艘船相当小，全长 423 英尺，总吨位（船舶整体内部容积的非线性度量）为 7,176 吨。战后美国将该船的所有权转让给法国政府，法国政府更改了该船的名称。该Grandcamp得克萨斯城抵达于1947年4月11日，负载硝酸铵化肥之前装载的货物，如麻线，棉花，花生和钻井设备在休斯敦。⁴这在休斯顿无法完成，因为休斯顿港务局禁止装载硝酸铵。⁵美国海岸警卫队的规定并未禁止在德克萨斯城装载这种化合物，因为硝酸铵被列为“危险货物”而不是“爆炸物”。⁶

1947 年的得克萨斯城港是几家大型工厂的所在地，包括“孟山都化学公司、Humble 石油和炼油公司、石油公司、共和国炼油公司，11 个仓库、9 个码头、1 个谷物升降机和两个德克萨斯城三分之一的住宅区，”根据海岸警卫队的报告。⁷许多住宅区紧邻[End Page 2]工业综合体和Grandcamp停泊的附近码头。

党卫军大营。德克萨斯城摩尔纪念公共图书馆。

德克萨斯城的灾难始于 1947 年 4 月 16 日，当时Grandcamp 的一个货舱发生了一场小火灾，其中 100...