Talk:Texas City disaster

conflicting official death tolls

the article appears to mention 2 different official casualty estimates:

"Official casualty estimates came to a total of 567, including all the crewmen that remained onboard the Grandcamp, but many victims were burned to ashes or literally blown to bits, and the official total is believed to be an underestimate." this passage makes it sound as though the official number is 567 + possibly an unknown number of other people never counted

only a few sentences later is this: "The official death toll was 581."

this gives another number... so maybe it's possible the official unknown number of people blown to bits in the first passage is 581-567=14, but then it wouldn't be an unknown number. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zackyfarms (talk • contribs) 03:09, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Texas City Explosion

My mother's first husband was killed in that explosion. His name was James Dycus. He was also my father's brother. Do not know if he was on a ship or working at one of the refineries. Would like to view any history that may mention his name. My name is Aletha Dycus Kowitz. I know were James is buried. If anyone can help me in my research, Please contact me at alethakowitz@aol.com Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.103.95.37 (talk) 21:17, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Grade

What grade of fertilizer was in the ships and storehouses? It can be fertilizer or bomb grade. So soon after WW2 there may have been a large surplus of bomb grade. I have never heard of a farmer exploding with fertilizer. 2601:181:8000:D6D0:2C28:2B4C:D97:C350 (talk) 11:43, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Nitrous oxide?

Citation [3] in the article states that the steam may have fueled the fire by converting ammonium nitrate to "extremely volatile nitrous oxide". However, nitrous oxide is nonflammable and does not pose an explosive hazard. Can someone check? 129.97.18.167 (talk) 02:04, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Nitrous oxide is indeed non-flammable at room temperature! But the article states that the fertilizer was much above room temperature. But the Wikipedia article, second sentence says, "At elevated temperatures, nitrous oxide is a powerful oxidizer similar to molecular oxygen." Thus the statement you question with "dubious?" is correct that this chemical conversion added to the problem.

To be clear, ships pumped steam into a hold to drive the atomospheric oxygen out, thus smothering the fire. But converting the oxygen in the steam into nitrous oxide is just replacing one oxydizer with another. Nick Beeson (talk) 20:58, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Removal of "the" etc

This edit removed all instances of "the" before ship's names etc. Not sure this is an improvement but let's discuss and reach a consensus. Shearonink (talk) 16:24, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Airplanes blown out of the sky?

This statement is sourced by an individual's account. Airplanes don't work that way unless they were directly in the blast itself. The laws of physics don't change during a powerful explosion. I think this is very slim evidence for such an extraordinary claim. Without stating where the planes were, I think this source is too dubious. Perhaps the article could say there was one account of two planes crashing as a result, something like that, but the claim is too big for the evidence as it is. Dcs002 (talk) 08:01, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

An article in Popular Science Montlhy magazine, April 1955 (available on-line at Google Books) said streel fraqments from the expiosion impacted the planes and that's what brought them down. 2600:4040:5D38:1600:5D90:3D83:D764:4E00 (talk) 13:00, 19 September 2022 (UTC)