HUNDREDS DEAD AND INJURED

Chronicle (Levin), 18 April 1947, Page 5

HUNDREDS DEAD AND INJURED

Press Assn.

FIRES RAGING THROUGHOUT TEXAS CITY

By Telegraph ,

-Copyright

jl f NEW YORK, April 16. It is now estimated that 650 were killed and 3000 injured as a result of the jiolocaust which has followed the two explosions aboard the Liberty ship Grand Camp at Texas City. The explosions shook the coast for miles and set off a number of smaller explosions along the dock area. The Grand Camp, formeriy the Benjamin R. Curtis, was sold to a French line last year. She was fully loaded with ammonium nitrate fertiliser and cotton. Hundreds of people were working on the dock at the 'v-V, ne of the explosion. Texas City oificials radioed Fort Crocket, at. Galveston, that poison gas was inliltrating the city and requesting that all available gasmasks should be rushed to the scene. The officials also asked for several hundred more stretehers and "all avcailable morphine in this part of the country." An appeal was also made that the Texas National Guard should be called out. _ The Red Cross has ordered its branches withm a radius of 100 miles to speed- all available _ doctors, nurses, ambulances and meclical supplies to the eity. Red: Cross workers from the area where the tornado last week killed over 100 are being rushed to the scene, while "disaster workers are fiying'to the rescue from Washington by n-avy planes.

The high casualty toll is attributed to the fact that hundreds crowdecl the docks to watch the Grand Camp burn. All who were aboard the ship are thought to have been killed. Many of the dead were working in the Monsanto chemical plant which the Galveston Trijbune says was almost razed by a subsidiary explosion. The Government built the plant during the war at a cost of 19,000,000 dollars. It covered 30 acres and produced almost a quarter of the styrene used in the war-time synthetic rubber programme. The fires included those among oil storages along the waterfront, which blazed with such intensity that a reporter could feel the heat from a distance of one and a-half miles. He said: "There must be 50 tanks on fire. The smoke rises 10 miles above them, and in some places it is almost as dark as, night." ,j An official said there were at least three major explosions, the first on the ship, the second at the Monsanto plant and the third at the oil company plant. ,"The concussion was simply terrible and new buildings far from the scene of the explosion were cracked from end to end." An eye-witness, Dr. Lane, a research specialist of the Monsanto Chemical Coy., told the United Press that he was looking out of a window this morning and saw thei French ship on fire. Almost immediately 500 citizens lined the waterfront to watch the fire. Suddenly there was a frightful explosion as the ship disintegrated. "We ran out in a hurry," said Dr Lane. "Three or four other explosions followed and I learned that at least two other ships had exploded. I staggered away from the explosion area passing scores of bodies. The fire spread like wildfire. 1 It was a horrible sight seeing all those bodies and not being able to help.