Disasters Of The Century | Season 3 | Episode 56 | Oppau Factory Explosion | Ian Michael Coulson 

One of my relatives was working the Oil Fields in Texas at the time of the Texas City Disaster in 1947, involving 2,300 tons of Ammonium Nitrate. He was in Galveston getting supplies for his company, which were late due to a shipping error. So he had a couple of days to wait for the shipment. He went over to Texas City to visit an old Army Air Force buddy. The friend lived on the outskirts of town. During a late breakfast the house shook and the windows imploded. Only one person in the house was seriously hurt (A handyman was fixing the roof and he fell off breaking his arm). Everyone else OK, but another explosion happened later. No one was hurt this time, but house became unstable due to the latest blast. His friend told him to leave before it got worse or he couldn't leave the area. He got in his car (now with broken windshields) and drove back to Galveston. They couldn't believe he's actually been there until they saw his car. It looked like someone had beat it with a sledgehammer along with the missing windows. His company actually bought him a new car so he could continue his supply trips.

And now we have almost the same exact thing in Beirut today... 2020 just keeps on giving :(

This was just so terrible, having to identify a loved one by only their shoes would just be beyond horrifying, hope they are at peace now :(

@ 8:05 Thats a pretty fancy electric drill for the 20s lol

Guys, that didn't happen in the Alps... Actually there aren't any mountains in Ludwigshafen (as Oppau is a part of Ludwigshafen)! Just because that happened in Germany you don't need to shown mountains. It's like showing the Statue of Liberty in a documentary about Montana...

01:06 - I grew up in the town right next to the factory. The countryside is totally flat and no one wears leather pants or hats with feathers... omg this is such a bad cliche... The rest of the documentary though is very interesting. Though I was born in the 1970s everyone who grows up there learns about this desaster in school.

My Granny (born 1899) told me that she could hear the explosion 25km away and her sister lost her husband who was a worker in the BASF.

Water, a small leak in the silo caused water to leak in and get the Ammonian Nitrate wet. that activates the chemical properties , as the water inside turns to fumes all it takes is an ignition source

It seems a bit harsh that the crowd wanted to lynch his children simply because their father was held responsible for the disaster.

I'm of German descent and on the Pennsylvania Dutch side Southern Germany this made me cry. My grandma Anna whose ancestors were from a different part of Germany lived in a almost hundred percent German farming community in Illinois. She would tell stories of Grain Elevator accidents that let to tragic death, silos that exploded, farm machinery deaths. I can see how they just went in thinking it was going to be a day like any other. They were just doing things as they always had a thousand times but this day it went wrong.

The Pepcon explosion was one of the best as it was filmed and showed the destructive shockwave travel across the desert. People have since done tests and found that explosive shockwaves are the most destructive. To have an explosion within a city would have been horrendous.

That poor father who had to identify his son by his new shoes is too much. I'm crying as I type this, first day on job too.

There must've been nothing left of the guys who were in the silo when it exploded.

At the end there are pictures of a bulldozer (with US soldiers) clearing the factory, a brick wall falling and coffins with boots. That is not from the -21 explosion but from the -48 explosion.

You have to give the BASF top brass credit for at least taking responsibility for giving financial assistance to the Oppau citizens and their lost employees, unlike a certain corporation called Union Carbide who shirked responsibility and didn't do shit for the unfortunates of Bhopal. But I'm really surprised this explosion didn't happen much earlier: Dynamite to break up ammonium nitrate??? It was an accident just waiting to happen.

I live near the town of West Texas. When the fertilizer plant exploded it destroyed a town of 3500.

German translations courtesy of Father Mulcahy.

Something happened where I lived in 1998. It was involving the grain elevator but not explosives. Look up Debruce Grain Elevator Explosion in 1998 in Wichita Kansas. I was in the Central West Area of Wichita at the time of the explosion. It traveled all the way to Hutchinson (Where my husband said he felt it at the time of the explosion) it was an hour away from Wichita. It scared us all when that happened. A violent shock way rumbled for miles.

Even worse that apparently another explosion at a similar factor had killed 19 people where they were doing the same thing, and nobody seem to heed this warning.

Hey there, nice documentary! Small correction: i lived in Germany for many years. It is "Ludwigs- hafen" not "Ludwig -shafen"

How will we break this lump of dynamite? German Chemist " easy! We will use gunpowder!"

Lol love the way the are working 4:03

Once again, an anachronistic map of Germany.

This apparently suicidal procedure was in fact common practice. It was well known that ammonium nitrate was explosive - it had been used extensively as such during World War I - but tests conducted in 1919 had seemed to indicate that mixtures of ammonium sulfate and nitrate containing less than 60% nitrate were unlikely to explode

Ammonium nitrate + TNT = Amatol. A high explosive used as filler for bombs, artillery shells, and grenades. You just saw what it can do. The blast went off with 1.5 kilotons of force, HALF the bang of the Halifax explosion.

I don't know why this channel doesn't have like at least 500k subs or more. It's a cool channel with all these documentaries.

watching this has me thinking of the Beirut explosion.

Why on earth didn't they just pack the product prior to stockpiling? Must be the cheaper way... Also, love the re-enactment featuring plastic hard hats and modern drill :-D

Using dynamite to breakup Nitrogen based fertilizer. Something doesn't quite sound right.

Ammonium nitrate is not just a fertilizer - it is amazing that it seems to match TNT in explosive power!

1921 in Germany, and then again in Beirut 2020, hopefully never ever again.

So, did Oppau just get blown up all over again in WW II? Seems like a prime target....

I am writing this on sep 15,2021 almost 100 years after the disaster

Interesting they never really explained what happened, even though it is well understood today. I'd like to learn more about the technical facts that were learned from and after incidents like these. Don't care for the repetitive nature of the show, my attention span isn't THAT short lol.

Good vid. I was not aware of this incident.

Wait...WHAT? Explosives at a fertilizer plant??? Great idea. 🤔

Explosives are so very unpredictable!

Nice job Herman

Explosives!??....yeah...well..it seemed like a good idea at the time

that was not the last blast in the same factory....In 2018 november 1 a huge blast occuren in the same plant in Ludwigshafen.The blast killed 2 person an caused huge damage by the facility.

I live 5 miles from a BASF plant in Beaver County PA. It is located on chemical plant row along the Ohio River.

Interesting presentation and and a quality upload! Thanks for posting.

There are no tall mountains anywhere near Oppau

TEARS,..,...,.ALL I HAVE.

What's scary even now we do not fully understand the chemical property of ammonium nitrate. A small fertilizer supply store in Texas USA exploded killing many fire fighters . It wasn't mixed with any fuel source it should have detonated.

Dynamite to blast out highly explosive, packed fertilizer... Hmmm. What could go wrong.

BASF is going string now in 2018, it's the largest chemical producer in the world.

2020 here, another boom boom from ammonium compounds, especially nitrate... Quite possibly

Plastic safety helmets in 1921???

Just like the explosion and blast in Beirut

1921? Not according to that impact drill and plastic bump caps there using. All the same though good video thank you

the fertlizer with the chemical componants probably acted like C4

5:00 And so they resorted to explosives." Because of course they did...

Should have named the town Kappow!

one hell of a bang for the buck

100 years ago today. Wow.

"the chemical composition of the fertilizer has slowly changed over time" takata airbags, anyone? They (takata ) should have known.

Oh yea, I have an idea, let's set off some explosives in a silo full of ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate fertilizer :/ what could go wrong?

Did she really wish her husband home to protect them from what she thought was an earthquake? Is that an exaggeration?. She has 3 kids with her...just can't picture it

Similar: Lake Denmark, N.J., Now known as Picatinny U.S. Army Arsenal, Texas City, Texas, Port Chicago, California, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Huge explosions.

Cool

I think this entire video is actually just a ploy to subliminally teach us that BASF stands for Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik......

Laughing my ass off at the mountains and the old aged paper newspaper. Christ...who made this (mo)documentary?

I guess when it comes down to disasters such as these. people dont always know mixing something with something dangerous is unexpected. we never know the outcomes

The guy working the pickaxe in the background of the fertilizer plant is fired.

I can see this going very wrong in a really stupid idea use explosives in ammonium nitrate!🥴

Is BASF the same co.that manufactured audio cassettes? I was born in Baumholder in '55, but came to the USA shortly after That, being an Army brat.

My town.

Just after the two minute mark, Herman is holding a newspaper that is already aged by several decades.

Didn't you guys already upload this one? Or am I confused

I think I would have preferred subtitles to the over-voice. It's such a mess trying to listen to German and English at the same time when German sort of makes sense for the most part. Though today, yes one would think you were crazy if you attempted to blast that stuff apart with explosives. But these documentaries sort of proves that we need accidents to happen before we do anything, sometimes more than one, before we do something to actually improve things and safety in general. If nothing ever happens, nothing will be changed.

Saw a meme about this. Came for the story.

There are no links...where are they?

so, the allies only needed to place a large order of fertalizer?

I really enjoy this series, but was this not some of the worse acting ever? I wonder why they feel reenactments are needed in the first place.

Anyone else hear Fr. Mulcahy in the voice over??? (of M*A*S*H fame)

Guess this was one time when BASF didn't make a lot of the things we buy better.

Reminds me of Oklahoma...

8:55 That smoke most definitely was not black, but orange. Coloured by nitrous gasses.

I am interested in knowing what changed in the Fertilizer maybe it wasn't compacted underneath but loose with plenty of air in a pocket ?

Makes me think of waco

*jesus commercial breaks*

OMG Using explosives to break caked explosives ...

amount of energy released from the blast... 1-2 kilotons

There are not so big mountains in the Palatinate.

today, that's 100 years ago.

That was one hell of a crater the blast created! Given the enormous power of that explosion, workers in the immediate area would simply have ceased to exist within a fraction of a second, dead before they knew it, painlessly.

MEN AND PROGRESS CREATE MORE DEVASTATION THAN NATURE EVER COULD.

22 min 5 ads entertainment vs.annoyance

Mountains around Ludwigshafen? Go figure.

is this BASF the same as the company that created magnetic tape and film?

to sound goes to Munich

So what actually happened?

Interesting. I had never heard about this, even though I live in Germany. You cheated with the picturesque landscape pics in the beginning of the video, though. Those mountains are nowhere near Oppau and Ludwigshafen. They are about 400 km further south. The landscape around Oppau is rather flat, as you can see from the footage of todays BASF plant in the end.

It interesting that the French soldiers were there helping out. Then a few years later one monster sends his German troops against them. It would have ruined the bond those people would have had with each other.

"A great deal of attention was paid to safety" ??? Really?!

And many years later, Oklahoma city.

Haha why they always show those alpine pictures, it is in Ludwigshafen-Oppau not in Bavaria xD

it was damn close to Hiroshima but a little less damage

Did the guy survive that lit the dynamite?