Posted 8 years ago
packrat-pl…
(310 items)
"On the morning of March 18, 1912, dozens of men at the Southern Pacific yard in San Antonio were working around an engine of the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railroad. The men were firing up the engine to test it and ready the train for service. At 8:55 a.m., the boiler exploded, sending the engine and many tons of railroad parts flying in every direction. The pressure wave and flying debris leveled the nearby railroad shops and rippled out into the neighborhood, snapping trees and smashing into homes. As the explosion spent itself, shattered metal and human remans rained down for blocks in every direction. The front end of the engine, almost intact, came to earth seven blocks away, flattening a house and killing a woman inside. The force of the explosion could be felt miles away.
It was the worst railroad boiler explosion in U.S. history. Back at the train yard, survivors were trapped under fallen buildings and debris and in danger of being burned alive as fire spread through the wreckage. San Antonio fire fighters and police, military personnel, and railroad workers frantically worked to free the survivors and fight the fire. Eerily, an engine damaged in the blast had its whistle bent open, and screamed for two hours before its boiler pressure subsided enough to shut down the noise. The final toll was 26 killed, with about 50 people injured and about 10 men unaccounted for and presumed dead."
Amazing story!
Reminds me of the Halifax explosion which was the largest explosion till the Hiroshima bomb
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Remembered reading about the Halifax explosion, but went back to it for a refresher. What an explosion & 2,000 dead.
Incredible tale, well told packrat. That's an amazing bit of history there.
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I still marvel at the part about half of the eng. coming down 7 blocks away ! Was the reason ever determined ? They do have relief valves & gauges that the engineers are supposed to monitor.
"The locomotive — basically a boiler on wheels — had been repaired, but when tested, “The pressure valves had indicated a possible problem, and the initial firing of the boiler had been stopped,” writes Farrell L. Tucker in “The Great Locomotive Explosion: A Socio-Historical Examination of a Tragedy,” available on the website of the UTSA College of Liberal and Fine Arts. “The boiler was then refired, and the pressure was allowed to build for a second time.”
Just before 9 a.m., the pressure literally blew sky-high. The metal structure encasing the boiler cracked, and the built-up steam was forced out through a sudden split, “breaking the boiler from its carriage and launching the multi-ton cylinder,” Tucker says. “Buildings, structures and people on the ground in the immediate area of the engine were blown to pieces or if closer to the engine, simply disintegrated.”
The pressure wave rocketed pieces of the wreckage — some weighing hundreds or even thousands of pounds — as far as seven blocks away. People were killed, and houses were destroyed; workers and equipment were “atomized,” says Tucker. First on the scene were ambulances and cavalry soldiers from Fort Sam Houston, followed by city police and firefighters. Emergency personnel kept order, aided the injured and started the grisly work of collecting body parts."
Also mentioned were some possibly faulty or defective boiler bolts.
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That was chilling!! How awful!
wow! early industrial accidents! thanks for the history lesson!
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