Fertilizer and Fire: The 1947 Texas City Disaster

On a crisp April morning in 1947, a small fire broke out deep in the cargo hold of the SS Grandcamp, a French vessel docked in Texas City. Below the decks sat 2,200 tons of ammonium nitrate, a highly volatile chemical fertilizer. What followed was a catastrophe that rewrote the map of the American Gulf Coast. The resulting detonation was so unimaginably violent that it triggered a localized tida...