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Show .1 A i i t t K I 1 t . C Ammonium Nitrate, the Explosive that Touched Off Blast, Can By PAUL P. ELLIS United Press Science Writer "Atlantic city, n. j., April 17. UJ) The stuff, of which the "miniature atomic bomb" that wrecked Texas City, Tex., was made, can be bought for about $4 a bushel. .The substance ammonium nitrate ni-trate makes excellent fertilizer, it also is a vital ingredient to the manufacture of certain types of explosives, including T. N: T. Ammonium nitrate in the pure form is a white crystal substance. It -looks something like sugar. As Is obvious from its name, it is made from ammonia and nitric add. Ammonium nitrate is one of the most mysterious of all the explosives. ex-plosives. In pure form, you can shoot a rifle bullet through it or pound it With a hammer, .and it will not explode. To set it off, there must be tome tremendous blast or shock. These were some of the observations obser-vations today of expert chemists attending the 111th annual meeting meet-ing of the American Chemical Society. They admitted that litle was known as to what causes ammonium am-monium nitrate to explode. One source, high in the ranks Armed Guards Keep Crowds Back From Improvised Morgue Br O. B. LLOYD. JR. United Press Staff Correspondent TEXAS CITY, April 17 (U.R) Guards with fixed bayonets kept the crowds back today from the windowless McGar garage. Inside, In-side, 150 embalmers, standing on pieces of board and tar-paper to keep from slipping on the bloody floor, prepared the dead for burial. . Too tired, too stunned to weep, the survivors searching for loved ones carried their grief silently en unsteady legs today back and forth between three places Mc-Gar's Mc-Gar's garage, the high school gymnasium across the street where the bodies were taken when they were ready for burial, and the city hall four blocks away where the death list is posted. ' The public was not allowed inside the garage to inter-i inter-i fere with the embalmers doing their macabre chores almost automatically. They no longer seemed to see the bodies aronnd them. Ambulances, bakery wagons and laundry trucks carrying the dead roll up in an endless stream irom the blast area along the Waterfront. An ambulance door pens and the bodies are wheeled ut on little carts common to ambulances but the wheels of ifchese carts drip blood. s Attendants strip the bodies of Clothes, mostly' rags, ripped by the blast. They search for some mark of identification a ring, wallet, a card or a company badge. Most of the dead so far .were from the Monsanto plant, the refineries or the city terminal and identification badges were frequent. Naked, the bodies were laid in FRUIT TREES SHRUBS, ROSES NOW IS THE TIME TO PLANT American Fork Nursery and Garden Supply Phone American Fork 64 J 11 mm n cop- a ii Be Bought for $4 of explosive know-how, said that ammonium nitrate mixed wun a contaminater such as petroleum, coke or some other high ex plosive, becomes a powerful ex plosive. That's why it has been used in the manufacture of explosives The amount used varies from 35 to 95 per cent in weight. It is also used extensively throughout the world as a fertil izer for crops. It is the cheap est form of such fertilizer, and one source estimated that you could buy the stuff in pure form for about 54 a bushel. This same authority recalled that ammonium nitrate was made in many plants during the war and there is always a utilization of the material after a war. Such could have "been the case at Texas City. One source spec ulated that the ammonium ni trate which blew up could have been substance reclaimed from explosives. That is, stuff that had been washed out of the explosive. It is possible, he said, that some contaminate could have remain ed in the ammonium nitrate. But what set it off? Fire, ordinarily, will not cause detonation, the same mystery remained re-mained unsolved after a dump of lines on strips of black tar paper, men and women lying side by side indiscriminately. Bradley K. Parker, Texas City embalmer. is in charge of iden tification. He puts a tag on the left leg of the corpse on which is scrawled all known information. informa-tion. The embalmers go to work. Inside it is breathlessly quiet. Outside it is bedlam. "I just heard you identified my husband's body," pleaded a girl about 20 with the guard at the door. ' I ve got to see him. We've only been married a month." "I'm sorry," the guard said softly. "I'm only obeying orders." "Do you have any little boys in there?" asked a mother. "No. No little boys," said the guard. She tries to push up close and look at a window. A guard gently pushed her back. The scene inside in-side the one story "L"-shaped building, 80 feet long by 45 feet wide, is too gruesome. She walked walk-ed away, white-faced, no longer able to find relief in tears. Seven automobiles remained inside the building which was built of concrete and brick. Everything else had been removed. remov-ed. Makeshift embalming tables are made of cement blocks. The workers, many of them embalming embalm-ing students rushed from Houston and Dallas, are served hot coffee. cof-fee. They turn their backs to their tables and gulp it hungrily. A chill wind was blowing from the norththe same merciful wind which saved the city from poisonous gas last night and the flames were kept headed out toward to-ward the bay and not into the devastated city. The flag on city hall was flying at half mast in a stiff breeze. rfBUElER PERMANENCE . . . BEAUTY... Minn imisii . . . c i c t r misi tm IU1III AVAILABILITY. . . sitcnf r laaitiirc invir ECONOMICAL... 11111111 Will tit r CMSTIUCTIIN For additional information and service writ today for re r vr A Hi BUEHNER CINDER BLOCK COMPANY S1 $ I I Ml I PHONE C - t 7 0 I till LAKE CITY, UTAH a Bushel ammonium nitrate blew up at Oppau in Germany, in 1926. An explosion of ammonium nl- ftrate, while it has been proved to be tremendous, has no comparison com-parison to an atomic bomb. The nitrate explosion, it was explained, ex-plained, has a "heaving effect," that is, a force that breaks down Nitroglycerine, for instance, shatters. shat-ters. Of course, neither is there any significant amount of radiation radi-ation from an explosion of ammonium am-monium nitrate. There may be some toxic gases, hut not a significant sig-nificant amount in the immediate area of the explosion, it was ex Dlained. Farmers using ammonium ni trate fertilizer need have no fear that their crops will be blown up. The stuff is diluted to a great degree before It is used as com mercial fertilizer. Emergency Ward Kept Busy With Victims of Blast By MARY FRASER Reporter from the Houston Press Written -For The United Press GALVESTON Tex., April 17 (U.R) A patient lay on a stretcher. He was a husky man whose blacK hair was matted with blood. One eye was totally gone. His left foot was nearly severed. "They keep coming," a young doctor said. This is the emergency ward of the John Sealy hospital. Two sailors bring in a youth of 20 on another stretcher. 'May we have this stretcher back soon?" one of them asked. A nurse deftly administers a hypo. Doctors pass from one wounded to another as soon as their hurts are bandaged, trying to keep up with the ambulance drivers still bringing the injured from Texas City. Another victim waits in a wheel chair. He is wearing overalls and a straw-hat. His mouth sags open. One tired nurse said 329 persons per-sons were treated in nine hours yesterday in the 12 by 13 receiving receiv-ing room. Five persons died in the room. Five high school boys came In and emptied an overflowing overflow-ing basket of bloody rags. Everyone pitched In to help. The stretcher-bearers were volunteers, black and white, old and young, the only requirement re-quirement was that you were able to carry your end of the load. A young man waiting on a stretcher asked for a priest. Father Dazio of St. Mary's church rushed in. I walked through the hospital. The less seriously injured and relatives of the seriously hurt waited quietly in the corridors. Piles of blood-soaked blankets filled the corners. Red Cross workers moved through the halls, serving coffee to long lines of blood donors and bandage rollers. "Where were you? I asked P. A. Hutchins, a Texas City painter. I was 40 feet in the air on top of a Monsanto building," he said. "Everything went black and the next thing I knew I was on the ground on my left side. I'm lucky. Very lucky." E. C. Williams, 32, told me he swam for an hour in a sea of oil before he was rescued. He could not remember how he was saved. J. D. Carper, 41, a refinery worker, said he was watching the burning ship from three-quarters of a mile distance when it blew up. "We were told to be careful,' not to let our welding equipment catch anything on fire," he said "Then came that terrible noise I picked myself up and ran three miles to the highway." Doctors said he ran the three miles prob ably with a broken back. Seven-year-old Daniel Azla, his right leg broken, looked up from a stretcher on the floor when I stopped beside him. "There was a big noise," he said. "Then a lot of people were dead." informative material. BLOuffi A DAILY HEftALD Thursday, April' 17. 197 Map Shows Blast Location r v tw?; &iz tmmm&Q Map shows location of explosion of huge new Gulf Coast chemical cate explosion of a freighter at Monsanto Chemical Company fighting equipment, ambulances Galveston (1) and Houston (4). Beaumont and Port Arthur (2) on south. Many Miraculous Escapes Recorded In Texas Blast By JAMES FLINCHUM United Press Staff Correspondent TEXAS CITY, April 17 (U.R) This is a city of dead and stories of miraculous escapes. Even United Press staff correspondent cor-respondent Robert E. Brown and I had a narrow escape. We left the water front area only a few seconds before the freighter High Flyer blew up this morning, killing kill-ing Charles Kelley, 25, of Houston, Hous-ton, and injuring 25 others in the area where we stood watching the waterfront fire. We hurried back. "It was just like the last time," said Red Cross worker Mrs. Hallie Berg, who also had escaped miraculously. mir-aculously. There were 50 Red Cross women near the scene. Some of them were injured but none was killed. "A Red Cross executive I knew only as Mr. Davis lost his eye," said Mrs. Berg. "I saw a man with his leg blown off. Most of the ship blew out over the water, but some of it landed on the dock." William Bankhead. 19, of Hous ton, said he and his buddy, James Nicholson, had returned to the waterfront only 30 minutes before the High Flyer explosion. After working all day, dragging dead and injured out of debris, they had taken a little time off, then returned to their volunteer work. "We were about 200 yards from the ship," Bankhead said. "It picked me up and threw me about 10 feet. James and I ran and crawled under a parked car and stayed stay-ed there until junk stopped falling." Some heroes of the early blasts, didn't survive the later ones. Father William A. Roach of St. Mary's Catholic church here ignored ig-nored warnings of workmen and went to the dockside to admin- Packed with Energy and Iron for Babys Health- mmi sirained tf $TaW L l I re tl" AC 1111 I W Look for the 1 V il J CEREALS MEATS VEGETABLES FRUITS DESSERTS 9! (NEA TeUpkofJ at Texas City, Texas, in the heart industry center. Reports indi Texas City touched off blast in $9,500,000 styrene plant there. Fire and other aid were rushed from Explosion was felt as far as north and Freeport (3), 45 miles Phone Strikers Ordered to Duty In Blast Zone ST. LOUIS, April 17 (U.R) Officials of the Southwestern Telephone Workers Union today ordered striking linemen and op erators to report for work im-ll mediately at Texas City, Tex., where an explosion has occurred. "The workers are expected to I withdraw only when the emerg ency has been met," a union spokesman told the United Press. ister to the dying. An explosion! caught him. He died in a Galves ton hospital. Funeral services for the deadj priest were the first to crystalizej from the chaos of the blast-torn area. Solemn Requiem mass was said at 8 a. m. today and the body shipped to Philadelphia for burial services arranged by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. William F. Roach of Media, Pa. Mayor J. C. Trahan was one I of those with a narrow escape. A city garage disintegrated around' him. Trahan, who wears a purple! heart for buzz bomb wounds suf fered in Belgium, said "no buzz the damage that has been wreak- bomb could ever compare with' ed in Texas City, It is such a terrific tragedy that the people have not been able to realize what; happened to them." WE NEED four steady women, 18 to 40, hours 8 to 4:30. Free transportation from Spring-ville, Spring-ville, Spanish Fork and Payson. Good wages. Come ready to work. Troy Laundry Laun-dry Company, 375 West Center, Provo, Utah. 1 " - Vkll'. i J" A dtc. 4 cToMor. vTu- rr 1 - Complete line of I '''4 ) ! t r St r i . 4t . vV Open-A-CKarge ACCOUNT! 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