The Texas City disaster: A re-examination

The explosion of two ships loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer at the Texas City docks on April 16 and 17, 1947, produced the worst industrial disaster in United States history. Despite this, inaccuracies persist about exactly what happened, the event has never been analyzed in terms of crisis management, and landside-waterside relationships are overlooked. This article applies the concepts of risk reduction, contingency planning, and incident response to these problems. Analysis reveals that the key elements of the Texas City Disaster were ignorance and complacency about hazardous materials, system interaction, and a perceptual and organizational void between land and marine operations. Although safety practices have improved since 1947, uneven relationships between potential system interaction and disaster response capabilities persist at ports and along navigable waterways and constitute the potential for future hazardous material disasters.