It lead to development of many safety codes.
NEW LONDON SCHOOL EXPLOSION
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/yqn01
. In 1937 New London, Texas, in northwest Rusk County, had one of the richest rural school districts in the United States. Community residents in the East Texas oilfield were proud of the beautiful, modern, steel-framed, E-shaped school building. On March 18 students prepared for the next day's Interscholastic Meet in Henderson. At the gymnasium, the PTA met. At 3:05 P.M. Lemmie R. Butler, instructor of manual training, turned on a sanding machine in an area which, unknown to him, was filled with a mixture of gas and air. The switch ignited the mixture and carried the flame into a nearly closed space beneath the building, 253 feet long and fifty-six feet wide. Immediately the building seemed to lift in the air and then smashed to the ground. Walls collapsed. The roof fell in and buried its victims in a mass of brick, steel, and concrete debris. The explosion was heard four miles away, and it hurled a two-ton concrete slab 200 feet away, where it crushed a car.
...
Of the 500 students and forty teachers in the building, approximately 298 died. Some rescuers, students, and teachers needed psychiatric attention, and only about 130 students escaped serious injury.
Awesome news!
http://galvestondailynews.com/story/332262
August 5, 2012 - HITCHCOCK, TX — For 45 years, Bebco Industries has built some pretty big projects but none as large as the one that slowly moved down Delaney Road late Friday night.
Portions of several area roads were closed as a 210-ton building measuring 30-feet-by-70-feet inched its way from Bebco’s manufacturing plant to Jones Lake. From there, the massive structure and it’s 80-ton sister building were to be loaded on a barge for a trip up the Intracoastal Waterway before heading to the Mississippi River for the journey to Indiana.
The massive buildings, two years in the making, are destined for BP’s Whiting, Ind., refinery.
“It’s the biggest single project we’ve ever done,” Bebco president Mike Baucom said. “We’ve done lots of smaller buildings for one facility but this is our single biggest structure ever.”
The buildings will house a series of pipes designed to help BP prevent or quickly stop fires on its Whiting Coker unit. The refinery is gearing up for a large import of Canadian oil.
The buildings are fire suppression water deluge units. They’re designed to water down a unit and prevent any fires that could erupt. The pipes inside the buildings will pump water from Lake Michigan.
Baucom said it cost about $1.5 million to build the two buildings. The moving costs alone are more than $1.2 million, Baucom said.
The haul to the water began about 9 p.m. Friday and wasn’t scheduled to end until sunrise today.
The blast-resistant buildings are part of the construction programs Bebco perfected during the past four decades.
It took 19 months to design the structure, Baucom said.”
So Longview is losing 300-400 jobs to New London. Just great.
Around here we see bumper stickers....... LOCAL FOOD
In Texas the stickers probably read.....LOCAL GAS
True progress will result from examining what you have and making it bigger and better. The folks in New London are showing the way
Later
Awesome. We NEED new refineries.