Quote:

---

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 oilfields were proud of the beautiful, modern, steel-framed, E-shaped school building.

On March 18 students prepared for the next day's Inter-scholastic 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 1936 Chevrolet.

---

Figures vary, but approximately 300 people, mostly children, died that day. This town lost a whole generation in a matter of seconds. Federal law was enacted shortly after requiring natural, or "green", gas have a distinct odor to it.
As a sidenote, one of the first reporters on the scene was a cub reporter working out of Dallas named Walter Cronkite. What a way to start a career, I probably would have quit right then. Glad he didn't, though.

Click here for more info about this disaster...

--------------------
"And sometimes is seen a strange spot in the sky A human being that was given to fly"....Eddie Vedder

Post Extras