“CITY OF FLAMES AND RUBBLE”

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25162, 18 April 1947, Page 7

“CITY OF FLAMES AND RUBBLE”

To-night the scene of the explosion Is a city of flames, torn steel, and smoking rubble, where the dead are uncounted and the living too dazed and too weary to cry. Scores of bodies are stacked on benches and tables in a mid-town garage and in the high school gymnasium. Dozens of embalmers are at work in the garage, where the slow process of identification also goes on. A mile away black smoke from six roaring fires billows 5000 feet into the air and drifts southward over the Gulf of Mexico. Fifty acres where city buildings once stood is new a picture of utter desolation. Oil storage tanks along the waterfront blazed with such intensity that a reporter could feel the heat from a distance of one and half miles. He said: “There must be 50 tanks on fire. Smoke rises 10 miles above them and in some places it is almost as dark as night.” Two occupants of a private aircraft flying over Texas City were killed When the explosion caused their aeroplane to crash in a field. A newspaper photographer who was Ipnnerly an Air Force officer said after flying over Texas City that he had been on many Superfortress raids *ffien less damage was done. When window’s were shattered and plaster was shaken from ceilings at _ French Liner Refloated,—The liner Liberte, formerly the German liner Europa, has been refloated at Le Havre, where she will be refitted. The liner Was blown from her moorings and heeled over in a gale in December. Paris, April 16.

i Galveston, 12 miles away, many 1 Galveston people rushed into the 2 streets, fearing an earthquake. Smoke I billowed over Galveston, obscuring the s sun, while the mushrooming smoke j over the explosion scene is described i as resembling the atom bomb pictures. Ammonium nitrate, which is a white ♦ powder, was made during the war by ■ United States Government plants producing synthetic nitrogen for use ■in : explosives. Part of the Government i equipment was modified after the war f to produce ammonium nitrate as fertir liser. As such it has been used exten- - sively by American farmers, and because of the world food shortage con- - siderable quantities have been shipped t abroad. 1 When intended for fertiliser, an 5 inert chemical is added to the white i powder so that it is no longer explo- , sive when farmers use it. 5 The circumstances in which the t Grand Camp’s ammonium nitrate exi ploded are so far unknown, but it is suggested that a minor explosion during the fire, together with the in3 tense heat, set it off. Chemists said . that if any part of the fertiliser ex--1 ploded the entire shipload would ; detonate simultaneously. The Grand Camp was 7176 tons. She I was built at Wilmingon, California, and t launched late in 1942. Negligent Driver to Die.— “As an example and a lesson to all careless drivers,” a military court sentenced to death by shooting a military driver, Franz Zrinjski, who had been convicted of killing two women pedestrians.— Belgrade. April 16.