One Hundred and six years after the Halifax Explosion, what have we learned?
Not much. We are still playing chicken with peoples' lives.
Bonus: This post was written for Treehugger in 2017 but they took it down, so I am putting it back up.
During the First World War, Halifax Harbour was busy as a staging area for transatlantic convoys. One hundred years ago today, a French cargo ship, the Mont-Blanc was carrying TNT, picric acid and benzine. The pilot saw the Norwegian ship, the Imo, coming toward it but the Imo wouldn't yield right of way. They finally both cut their engines but at 8:45 AM had a minor, grazing collision that wouldn't have normally caused much damage.
But a few barrels of benzine toppled open. When the Imo reversed engines to disengage, it created sparks which ignited the benzine. The crew abandoned ship, and the people of Halifax gathered to watch the fire.
At 9:04 the Mont-Blanc blew up. According to Wikipedia,
The ship was completely blown apart and a powerful blast wave radiated away from the explosion at more than 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) per second. Temperatures of 5,000 °C (9,000 °F) and pressures of thousands of atmospheres accompanied the moment of detonation at the centre of the explosion. White-hot shards of iron fell down upon Halifax and Dartmouth. Mont-Blanc's forward 90 mm gun, its barrel melted away, landed approximately 5.6 kilometres (3.5 mi) north of the explosion site.
1600 people were killed instantly and another 400 died from their injuries. Thousands were injured, including hundreds who were blinded by flying glass because they were watching the fire from the windows inside their houses before the explosion.
It was the largest man-made explosion in history until the atomic bomb was dropped.
So what have we learned? Remarkably, not much. Even though the explosion was caused by navigation errors, both Captains got acquitted, much as happens today after explosions like the Deepwater Horizon or the Exxon Valdez or 99 percent of car crashes.*
Writing in the Globe and mail, Kevin Quigley wonders: "One hundred years later we might ask, are we safer today from an accidental explosion of dangerous chemicals? The answer is yes, but important weaknesses remain....The increased presence of dangerous chemicals and urbanization are a toxic mix, because accidents happen."
Today, we have trains full of explosive chemicals running through the middle of cities; trains are carrying explosive crude oil across Canada and the US, leading to disasters like the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster of 2013. In China, 193 people were killed in 2015 in the Tianjin explosion. In Houston this year, a chemical plant blew up during Hurricane Harvey.
All over the world, increasing population densities in cities are bringing people closer and closer to dangerous chemical facilities. According to Greenpeace, which produces a map showing risks to Americans,
One in three Americans is at risk of a poison gas disaster by living near one of hundreds of chemical facilities that store and use highly toxic chemicals. A chemical disaster at just one of these facilities could kill or injure thousands of people with acute poisoning. Of the 12,440 chemical facilities that report their chemical disaster scenarios to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Greenpeace has identified 473 chemical facilities across the U.S. that each put 100,000 people or more at risk. Of those, 89 put one million or more people at risk up to 25 miles downwind from a plant.
We have to stop stupid.
We have written before about how 31,000 Americans died on the roads last year because of stupid -- drunk, unbuckled or speeding. In Halifax 100 years ago, thousands were killed or injured because of stupid:
[The harbour pilot Mackey] first spotted Imo when she was about 0.75 miles (1.21 km) away and became concerned as her path appeared to be heading towards his ship's starboard side, as if to cut him off his own course. Mackey gave a short blast of his ship's signal whistle to indicate that he had the right of way, but was met with two short blasts from Imo, indicating that the approaching vessel would not yield its position. The captain ordered Mont-Blanc to halt her engines and angle slightly to starboard, closer to the Dartmouth side of the Narrows. He let out another single blast of his whistle, hoping the other vessel would likewise move to starboard, but was again met with a double-blast in negation.
A hundred years later, we are still playing chicken with peoples lives. That should be the lesson of Halifax: It is time to stop it.
UPDATE, 2023: The captain of the Imo did not get acquitted. “The explosion wrecked the upper decks of Imo. Three of the four personnel on her open bridge were killed: Captain From, Pilot William Hayes and R. Albert Ingvald Iverson” But everyone who lived eventually got off. “The Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry carried out the official investigation into the cause of the collision. Charles Jost Burchell, a prominent Halifax lawyer, represented Imo's owners as he did in the lengthy civil litigation. The inquiry initially held Imo's crew blameless, and put the entire responsibility for the collision on the Mont-Blanc. However following appeals to the Supreme Court of Canada in May 1919 and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on 22 March 1920, both ships were found to have made navigational errors and were found equally at fault for the collision and its consequences.”
I totally disagree. Industrial safety (and every kind of safety) has vastly improved, even to the point of there now being a pathological safetyism problem.
Lloyd:
I do not believe we can be safe enough. For example, Michigan is #1 for PFAS pollution. For years, companies dumped into the environment and contaminated ground and underground water. You can not eat the fish taken out of some lakes.
In 2023, US Judge warned Flint officials to complete the replacement of lead piping supplying water to homes. This is an old issue going back a decade. That the state and the city are still not fixing this is problematic. Whether the water is treated properly or not, lead piping should be replaced.
Gelman Sciences Ann Arbor Michigan watered their grass with a mixture of water and 1,4-dioxane. It was thought by the owner and others sunlight would breakdown the 1,4-dioxane. It didn'e and many were drinking bottled water. This is still going on in 2023.
"We have written before about how 31,000 Americans died on the roads last year because of stupid -- drunk, unbuckled or speeding. In Halifax 100 years ago, thousands were killed or injured because of stupid." People believe they have a right to go as fast as they wish on highways. It is dangerous as the amount of time to react is lessened. Add to this, tailgating because they can not exceed the speed limit when someone else is passing another vehicle. It is all about them.
We still are endangered by poor and bad practices. Much of it is due to enforcement.
With you Lloyd