This clip from a newsreel from 1959 shows firefighters responding to a chemical fire. This was before our modern hazmat response procedures and equipment (which began in the 1970s). I could not find more details on this incident, so if you know more, please contact me. The narrator refers to an earlier chemical fire, the Black Tom Explosion from 1916. On Sunday morning, July 30, 1916, at 2:08 a.m., Jersey City residents were awakened by a major explosion and a succession of explosions that lasted for several hours, sending shock waves as far as ninety miles away. The explosions occurred at Black Tom Island. Owned by the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, it filled in the marshland between Black Tom and the mainland; it was then used as a work yard where the National Dock and Storage Company had warehouses. The pier stood opposite the Statue of Liberty in the New York Harbor in the Greenville section of Jersey City and today is along Morris Pesin Drive at Liberty State Park in the vicinity of the Park Administration Building and Flag Plaza. Prior to American entry into World War I, war materiel manufactured in the northeastern states was sent to Black Tom for transport to the Allied Powers of England, France, Italy and Russia. On the evening of the Black Tom incident, barges and freight cars at the depot were reportedly filled with over two million pounds of ammunition waiting to be shipped overseas. The munitions at the depot included shrapnel, black powder, TNT and dynamite. The Johnson Barge No.17, for example, held some one hundred thousand pounds of TNT. Given these incendiary devices, the Black Tom facility was not securely gated to safeguard the nearby civilian population from the potential of foul play. Shortly after midnight on Sunday morning, small fires on the pier were discovered and the eight guards on duty gave flight. One of the guards, however, sounded the fire alarm alerting the Jersey City Fire Department. The fires gradually set off a succession of exploding shrapnel shells. After the terrifying 2:08 a.m. blast, the well-stocked arsenal was ablaze, even casting the barges at Black Tom afloat in New York Harbor. Pieces of metal from the explosion struck the Jersey Journal building clock tower at Journal Square, stopping the clock at 2:12 a.m. The commissioner of public safety in Jersey City, was informed that Barge Johnson 17 "had tied up at Black Tom to avoid a twenty-five dollar towing charge. Hague and Hudson County prosecutor Robert S. Hudspeth agreed that the presidents of the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company and the Central Railroad of New Jersey had violated the twenty-four hour time limit for storing dynamite and for keeping railroad cars with explosives at the terminal. The conditions at Black Tom had placed the civilian population in Jersey City and elsewhere in immediate danger. Accounts of the total number of fatalities differ, but it is known that a policeman, a guard at Black Tom, and the barge captain of the Johnson Barge No.19 were killed; a ten-week old infant was thrown from his crib. Hundreds of individuals were injured. The reported property damage was over $20 million. The Black Tom depot with its freight cars, warehouses, barges, tugboats and piers was completely destroyed. In the nearby harbor, the Statue of Liberty sustained $100,000 in damages from the spray of shrapnel, and newly-arrived immigrants at Ellis Island had to be evacuated for processing at the Immigration Bureau at the Battery in New York City. Some five hundred people living on houseboats and barges in the harbor also required evacuation. Across the river, windows blew out in lower Manhattan and windows panes shattered in the Times Square area. Repercussions from the explosions were reported along the Jersey shoreline from Hoboken to Bayonne and over to Staten Island and Brooklyn and from as far away as Philadelphia. A debate about the cause of the fire was between carelessness of one of the employees or guards, or German sabotage. According to Jules Witcover in Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany's Secret War in America, 1914-1917, this situation resulted in the work of German saboteurs to prevent British receipt of munitions from the US. For more link to http://www.njcu.edu/programs/jchistory/Pages/B_Pages/Black_Tom_Explosion.htm . In 1980 another New Jersey chemical fire at the Chemical Control Corporation site consisted of a 2-acre parcel of land adjacent to the Elizabeth River. This hazardous materials site fire helped lead to the passage of the Superfund legislation later that year. A clip of this fire 1980 Chemical Control Site Fire and Cleanup is poste to my channel at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPgwifGzJRU&feature=channel_page .
Loading...
This is crazy...im doing my project n chemicals in north nj/ny and found this!
EnviroGurl1 2 months ago
@elwatusi92 Yeah, I know - my comment should have read "this Black Tom LIKE" explosion....
FlyontheWallinFLA 1 year ago
@FlyontheWallinFLA This aint the Black Tom explosion, the Black Tom explosion occured during World War 1 and that was caused by German spies.
elwatusi92 1 year ago
If we do not do something to control our borders in this post 9/11 world, this Black Tom explosion will pale in comparison.
FlyontheWallinFLA 2 years ago