NOAA Office of Response and Restoration
FEBRUARY 17, 2015 -- On March 18, 1937, a gas explosion occurred in a school in New London, Texas, killing almost 300 of the 500 students and 40 teachers in the building.
The brand new, steel-and-concrete school, located in the East Texas Oilfield, was one of the wealthiest in the country. Yet it was reduced to rubble in part because no one could smell the danger building in the basement.
While the building originally had been designed for a different heat distribution system, school officials had recently approved tapping into a residue gas line of the local Parade Gasoline Company, a common money-saving practice in the oilfield at the time.
Unfortunately, on that March afternoon, a faulty pipe connection caused the gas (methane mixed with some liquid hydrocarbons) to leak into a closed space beneath the building. Just before class dismissal, when a maintenance employee turned on an electric sander, the odorless gas ignited. The resulting explosion caused the building to collapse, burying victims. (Watch a video of a news reel covering the event from March 1937.)
By standards employed today, a gas leak could be detected in advance by its odor. The odorless gas in the New London disaster was able to accumulate in the space before anyone was aware of it.
As a direct result of this incident, a Texas law mandated that malodorants be added to all natural gas for commercial and industrial use, a practice that is now an industry standard. Mercaptan, a harmless chemical, gives gas its distinctive rotten egg odor. It is added to natural gas to make it quickly recognizable and to prevent accidents like this from happening.
Read full article: http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about/media/todays-responders-1937-texas-tragedy-still-carries-lessons-avoiding-disaster.html
