Some families lost more than one child. Photo: Ellie Goldberg, 2005

'Gone at 3:17: The Untold Story of the Worst School Disaster in American History.' David Brown and Michael Wereschagin will talk about their book and answer questions in a free session Saturday February 25 at 3 p.m. at the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall, 300 Beechwood Ave., Carnegie.

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At 3:17 p.m. on March 18, 1937, a natural gas leak beneath the London Junior-Senior High School in the oil boom town of New London, Texas, created a lethal mixture of gas and oxygen in the school’s basement. The odorless, colorless gas went undetected until the flip of an electrical switch triggered a colossal blast. 

The two-story school, one of the nation’s most modern, disintegrated, burying everyone under a vast pile of rubble and debris. More than 300 students and teachers were killed, and hundreds more were injured. As the seventy-fifth anniversary of the catastrophe approaches, it remains the deadliest school disaster in U.S. history. 

Few, however, know of this historic tragedy, and no book, until now, has chronicled the explosion, its cause, its victims, and the aftermath. Join us as authors David M. Brown and Michael Wereschagin present a talk and question and answer session about their powerful, timely and timeless book...

The authors found the situation 75 years ago in East Texas very much like what is going on in Western Pennsylvania today. Both areas became havens for energy exploration, and the urgency to extract resources -- oil and natural gas in Texas, Marcellus shale gas drilling in Pennsylvania -- is fierce.

Brown insists there's no political element in "Gone ... " but it can be read as "a darn good cautionary tale, that shows you exactly what can happen when you refuse to, or can't, see the dangers that can lie all around you," he says.

"I have been in a lot of "events" in my 40 years, and the most dangerous of all safeties is the illusion of safety. ... We call this an operational setup for failure – very bad in risk management approaches." -- Richard B. Kuprewicz, President of Accufacts Inc.

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You can prevent explosions in your school. 

Yes, it is painful to threaten the illusion of safety in a school or community and to talk about death and loss. The New London survivors did not talk about their pain for more than forty years.  They teach us that it is even more painful to live with a tragedy when opportunities to prevent loss were ignored or overlooked.

March 18, 2012 is the 75th anniversary of the 1937 Texas School Explosion.

Effective Policies to Eliminate Chemical Releases and Exposures in Schools 
 Healthy School News Fall 2011 Issue (PDF) (8 pp. 1.4MB)
 
To promote a national framework for the prevention of chemical incidents in schools, the ATSDR National Toxic Substance Incidents Program (NTSIP) has teamed up with Interstate Chemical Threats Workgroup (ICTW) to bring you this exciting fall webinar series. 

During the sessions we’ll explore policies and prevention efforts for three chemicals/chemical categories that lead the NTSIP incident list: elemental mercury, cleaning products, and pesticides. 

At the conclusion of the webinar series, the summary notes will guide the development of a white paper entitled, Best Practices and Policies for Eliminating Chemical Releases and Exposures in Schools. 

This paper will be distributed nationally and will serve as a basis of ATSDR’s outreach to those who can effect change. If you are not an ICTW member, but would like to attend please contact Lori Copan at lori.copan@cdph.ca.gov.

Save the dates:   All sessions will begin at 12:30pm EST/9:30am PST and run for 75 minutes.

October 13th  Mercury exposures and effective policies

November 10th  Green cleaning policies to eliminate exposures

December 15th  Pesticide exposures and effective policies

January 12th  Discussion on white paper development: “Best Practices and Policies for Eliminating Chemical Releases and Exposures in Schools”.