Over Sixty
years ago, on June 10, 1952, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals overturned a previous decision in the case of Elizabeth
Dalehite, et al. v. United States, finding that the United States
maintained the right to exercise its own "discretion" in vital national
matters.
Two years prior to this decision, on April 13, 1950, the district court had found that the United States was responsible for a litany of negligent acts of omission and commission by 168 named agencies and their representatives in the manufacture, packaging, and labeling of ammonium nitrate, further compounded by errors in transport, storage, loading, fire prevention and fire suppression, all of which led to the explosions and the subsequent carnage.
The Port of Texas City is a busy deep-water port on Texas' Gulf Coast, as well as a petroleum refining and petrochemical manufacturing center. During, and immediately after World War II many fires would erupt on the ships there. As a result it was a cheap form of entertainment for local residents to walk to the wharf's and watch the fires.
The morning of April 16, 1947 dawned clear and crisp, cooled by a brisk north wind.
Just before 8 a.m., longshoremen removed the hatch covers on Hold 4 of the French Liberty ship Grandcamp as they prepared to load the remainder of a consignment of ammonium nitrate fertilizer.
Some 2,300 tons were already on-board, 880 of which were in the lower part of Hold 4.
The remainder of the ship's cargo consisted of large balls of sisal twine, peanuts, drilling equipment, tobacco, cotton, and a few cases of small caliber ammunition.
No special safety precautions were in force at the time.
Several longshoremen descended into the hold and waited for the first pallets holding the 100-pound packages to be hoisted from dockside. It wasn't long before someone smelled smoke. A plume of smoke was observed rising between the cargo holds and the ship's hull, apparently about seven or eight layers of sacks down.
Neither a gallon jug of drinking water nor the contents of two fire extinguishers supplied by crew members seemed to do much good. As the fire continued to grow, someone lowered a fire hose, but the water was not turned on. Since the area was filling fast with smoke, the longshoremen were ordered out of the hold.
While Leonard Boswell, the gang foreman, and Peter Suderman, superintendent of stevedores, discussed what action to take, the master, or captain, of the Grandcamp appeared and stated in intelligible English that he did not want to put out the fire with water because it would ruin the cargo. Instead, he elected to suppress the flames by having the hatches battened and covered with tarpaulins, the ventilators closed, and the steam system turned on. At the master's request, stevedores started removing cases of small arms ammunition from Hold 5 as a precautionary measure.
As the fire grew, the increased heat forced the stevedores and some crew members to leave the ship. The Grandcamp's whistle sounded an alarm that was quickly echoed by the siren of the Texas City Terminal Railway Company. Despite a strike by the telephone workers, Suderman, seriously concerned by now, managed to reach the Fire Department and then called Galveston for a fire boat.
The ammonium nitrate on board the Grandcamp detonated at 9:12 a.m., rupturing the ship and sending the cargo of peanuts, tobacco, twine, bunker oil and the remaining bags of ammonium nitrate 2,000 to 3,000 feet into the air. Fireballs streaked across the sky and could be seen for miles across Galveston Bay as molten ship fragments erupted out of the pier.
The blast caused a 15-foot tidal wave that crashed onto the dock and flooded the surrounding area. Windows were shattered in Houston, 40 miles to the north, and people in Louisiana felt the shock 250 miles away. Most of the buildings closest to the blast were flattened, and there were many more that had doors and roofs blown off. The Monsanto plant, only 300 feet away, was destroyed by the blast.
Probably the exact number of people killed will never be known, although the ship's anchor monument records 576 persons known dead, 398 were identified, and 178 listed as missing. All records of personnel and payrolls of the Monsanto Company were destroyed, and many of the dock workers were itinerants and thus difficult to identify.
Almost all persons in the dock area-firemen, ships' crews, and spectators-were killed, and most of the bodies were never recovered; 63 bodies were buried unidentified. The number of injured ranged in the thousands, and loss of property totaled about $67 million.
The SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) affirmed that decision (346 U.S. 15, June 8, 1953), in a 4-to-3 opinion, noting that the district court had no jurisdiction under the federal statute to find the U.S. government liable for "negligent planning decisions" which were properly delegated to various departments and agencies. In short, the FTCA (Federal Tort Claims Act) clearly exempts "failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty", and the court found that all of the alleged acts in this case were discretionary in nature.
The Dalehite decision was eventually "appealed" to Congress, where relief was granted by means of legislation (Public Law 378, 69 Stat. 707 (1955)). When the last claim had been processed in 1957, 1,394 awards, totaling nearly $17 million, had been made.
A very special thanks is given to Keith Downs for providing material for research for this article. Keith's grandfather worked on the cleanup and restoration after the disaster.
Doc Halliday is an author, columnist and consultant who resides in Marshall, Texas. He may be contacted by mail at: P. O. Box 1551, Marshall, TX 75671; or by email at: w_halliday@yahoo.com
Two years prior to this decision, on April 13, 1950, the district court had found that the United States was responsible for a litany of negligent acts of omission and commission by 168 named agencies and their representatives in the manufacture, packaging, and labeling of ammonium nitrate, further compounded by errors in transport, storage, loading, fire prevention and fire suppression, all of which led to the explosions and the subsequent carnage.
The Port of Texas City is a busy deep-water port on Texas' Gulf Coast, as well as a petroleum refining and petrochemical manufacturing center. During, and immediately after World War II many fires would erupt on the ships there. As a result it was a cheap form of entertainment for local residents to walk to the wharf's and watch the fires.
The morning of April 16, 1947 dawned clear and crisp, cooled by a brisk north wind.
Just before 8 a.m., longshoremen removed the hatch covers on Hold 4 of the French Liberty ship Grandcamp as they prepared to load the remainder of a consignment of ammonium nitrate fertilizer.
Some 2,300 tons were already on-board, 880 of which were in the lower part of Hold 4.
The remainder of the ship's cargo consisted of large balls of sisal twine, peanuts, drilling equipment, tobacco, cotton, and a few cases of small caliber ammunition.
No special safety precautions were in force at the time.
Several longshoremen descended into the hold and waited for the first pallets holding the 100-pound packages to be hoisted from dockside. It wasn't long before someone smelled smoke. A plume of smoke was observed rising between the cargo holds and the ship's hull, apparently about seven or eight layers of sacks down.
Neither a gallon jug of drinking water nor the contents of two fire extinguishers supplied by crew members seemed to do much good. As the fire continued to grow, someone lowered a fire hose, but the water was not turned on. Since the area was filling fast with smoke, the longshoremen were ordered out of the hold.
While Leonard Boswell, the gang foreman, and Peter Suderman, superintendent of stevedores, discussed what action to take, the master, or captain, of the Grandcamp appeared and stated in intelligible English that he did not want to put out the fire with water because it would ruin the cargo. Instead, he elected to suppress the flames by having the hatches battened and covered with tarpaulins, the ventilators closed, and the steam system turned on. At the master's request, stevedores started removing cases of small arms ammunition from Hold 5 as a precautionary measure.
As the fire grew, the increased heat forced the stevedores and some crew members to leave the ship. The Grandcamp's whistle sounded an alarm that was quickly echoed by the siren of the Texas City Terminal Railway Company. Despite a strike by the telephone workers, Suderman, seriously concerned by now, managed to reach the Fire Department and then called Galveston for a fire boat.
The ammonium nitrate on board the Grandcamp detonated at 9:12 a.m., rupturing the ship and sending the cargo of peanuts, tobacco, twine, bunker oil and the remaining bags of ammonium nitrate 2,000 to 3,000 feet into the air. Fireballs streaked across the sky and could be seen for miles across Galveston Bay as molten ship fragments erupted out of the pier.
The blast caused a 15-foot tidal wave that crashed onto the dock and flooded the surrounding area. Windows were shattered in Houston, 40 miles to the north, and people in Louisiana felt the shock 250 miles away. Most of the buildings closest to the blast were flattened, and there were many more that had doors and roofs blown off. The Monsanto plant, only 300 feet away, was destroyed by the blast.
Probably the exact number of people killed will never be known, although the ship's anchor monument records 576 persons known dead, 398 were identified, and 178 listed as missing. All records of personnel and payrolls of the Monsanto Company were destroyed, and many of the dock workers were itinerants and thus difficult to identify.
Almost all persons in the dock area-firemen, ships' crews, and spectators-were killed, and most of the bodies were never recovered; 63 bodies were buried unidentified. The number of injured ranged in the thousands, and loss of property totaled about $67 million.
The SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) affirmed that decision (346 U.S. 15, June 8, 1953), in a 4-to-3 opinion, noting that the district court had no jurisdiction under the federal statute to find the U.S. government liable for "negligent planning decisions" which were properly delegated to various departments and agencies. In short, the FTCA (Federal Tort Claims Act) clearly exempts "failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty", and the court found that all of the alleged acts in this case were discretionary in nature.
The Dalehite decision was eventually "appealed" to Congress, where relief was granted by means of legislation (Public Law 378, 69 Stat. 707 (1955)). When the last claim had been processed in 1957, 1,394 awards, totaling nearly $17 million, had been made.
A very special thanks is given to Keith Downs for providing material for research for this article. Keith's grandfather worked on the cleanup and restoration after the disaster.
Doc Halliday is an author, columnist and consultant who resides in Marshall, Texas. He may be contacted by mail at: P. O. Box 1551, Marshall, TX 75671; or by email at: w_halliday@yahoo.com
No comments:
Post a Comment