Disasters Of The Century | Season 4 | Episode 6 | New London School Explosion | Ian Michael Coulson 

I have a picture of your great aunts grave. We went a few weeks ago and visited the museum and cemetery.

@@adventureswithnoahmanship6755 I'm easy to find. Real name. Send it if you want. I have a pic of the grave as well. Her picture is on the gravestone.

Andrew Cowling I’ve read about what your community went through, and you’re in a lot of strangers prayers, if that’s any comfort to you. You have many worldwide who hope for your wellbeing. Much love from Texas.

Living in the UK, my first thoughts watching this went to the people of Aberfan. The tragedy your community faced was before my time but broke my heart when I learned of the souls lost that day. The Aberfan babes & adults are still remembered by so many with love & sadness

Aberfan was so desperately tragic So sorry for what you went through

Andrew Cowling, I heard about the Aberfan disaster fairly recently. My heart goes out to you

More than likely he is no longer with us.

@@K3vinK In that case, I hope he made peace with it & died peacefully. I know he mentioned accepting it finally, but I truly hope he found peace.

That is my grandfather. He died about 10 years ago. But thank you so much. He carried that guilt for far too long. He lived his whole life across the street from the school and even donated part of the property where the museum is today.

PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR SOMEONE TO BLAME AFTER A DISASTER HAPPENS. IT'S SO SAD BECAUSE I THINK THE DISASTER IS BAD ENOUGH. PEOPLE SHOULD BE JUST COMFORTING THOSE WHO ARE GRIEVING STRONGLY AND DON'T SEEM TO BE COPING TOO WELL. SIR, NO THIS ABSOLUTELY WASN'T YOUR FAULT. PLEASE DON'T BLAME YOURSELF. YOU HAVE BEEN TRAUMATIZED ENOUGH. GO LIVE A PEACEFUL LIFE. ✌️ 🙏 ❤

@@susanhowe163 he passed away about 10 years ago. He finally came to peace with it and let go of the guilt.

Thanks for your comment DJ.

If these tragedies have taught us anything it's that those precautions are necessary to avoiding disaster. Good for you school to take the proper steps!

Bad Day HQ exactly. This was a tragedy but perhaps it has prevented even worse ones with the knowledge it gave us.

Someone farted

That exact same thing happened at my high school .. there was a "gas leak" but turns out it was a false alarm!

One time my school had a gas leak and they put us in the cafeteria 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

id like to go see the museum!

"Seconds from Disaster" and it's the forensic investigations are very well done .. I never realize there were so many disasters like plane crashes .. train derailments .. ship explosions! etc..

As someone with two histories and a theatre degree, I really wish they did their homework a little bit more when it comes to their reenactments. Historical accuracy is a THING and 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

@@Dovietail Gloria, Gloria! I like what you did there. That's my kind of response. I love the subtle passive aggressiveness followed by bomb to your intellectually unworthy adversary.

Couldn't agree more! I didn't know there were so many disasters I'd never heard of. And those dramatic voices are only useful to compensate for lack of a story. I just want to know what happened without being spoon-fed my own reaction to it.

They don't produce anything. These are old shows they stole and uploaded as their own.

These used to air on History channel quite a while ago, I'm glad they've been uploaded to yt, I always found them interesting.

Karolyn Kelly-O'Keefe, Canadian news is ignored by the American media. I was in Canada during a major political crisis there, and I observed that there was not a single story about it in the U.S. media.

I agree.

I made a comment about this as well. In this tragedy the community came together and showed the humanity that exists in this world. I was amazed by the communities response and wish I belonged to it. People really came together. I have nothing but utter respect for the people of this town.

@@nicholealderfer191 Me too.

Professional Commente, today the corporation would fire them for abandoning their jobs.

It does remind me of how so many people and first responders came together in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Small differences and quarrels were put aside in order to rescue as many people as possible, put out the fires that burned for weeks and to rebuild.

What I take away is how the government never has the best interest of the working class in mind

Yes a very sad event. Thanks for watching.

I give the survivors a great deal of credit for the way they were able to see things in such a pragmatic manner. Instead of carrying anger and frustration with them, they saw it as a situation that brought on safety measures that have saved countless thousands going forward. It takes real fortitude to go through such a tragedy and carry such a positive, open minded viewpoint.

Methylmercaptan - and if you add a little hydrogen sulfide, you have the two primary stink gasses in human farts :D

It is amazing how little Mercaptan the gas company has to add to the gas. It is anywhere from 1 to 10 parts per million. This is the disaster why Mercaptan (Methyl or Ethyl, it doesn't matter) is used to detect gas leaks and get people out in case of one.

Lisa you might want to check out the Aberfan Whales Disaster which wiped out a elementary school. Very sad disaster involving young children. It was like the pied piper came into town and took all the kids.

It's Wales not Whales.

Lissa Love, and the guy who blew up a school in the 1920s, I believe, with all of the children in it.

@@BadDayHQ Someone tells you they don't like to see children killed in disasters .. so the first thing you do is tell them to watch even smaller children get killed in disasters! 💩👎🏽👎🏽

@@tankfisher8167 SHUT UP LIER

Thanks for adding to our story.

@@BadDayHQ Thanks for the excellent documentary.

An entire 'downtown' in a city in Mexico was wiped out due to a gas leak that went on for a week or more and finally exploded. People had smelled it. People had complained about it. Other people checked for it's source but weren't diligent enough to find it. Documentary here on You-Tube - probably Seconds to Disaster, or Countdown to Zero, or one like it. You can Google for it.

That's normal human behavior! .. where are you from??😂🤣😂

Can't say that today. People pull out their phones. .. this does warm my heart tho

Danielle Holt that’s your great great aunt but I’m sorry! And not crazy at all, hope you get to!

Fuck it most of them would be dead by now anyway 😎😎😎😎

If you want a good book about this tragedy, check out Gone at 3:17

Saving money was not the problem. Unscented natural gas was the problem.

Becky Sprang - if you're still around, I'd like to know your dissertation title and your field. I've collected a huge database of disasters that involve human crushes, crowd collapses, and various other crowd disasters and failures of crowd management. I meant to write something up for publication at some point, but I sorta let it go. If you're interested, if this is in your field, and if you'd like to talk, you can reply here or email my gmail account with this username (beenaplumber).

@@olegtrushin6220 OMG! That tragedy is in my database, and it's one of the saddest and most irresponsible club fires ever. In English we call it the Lame Horse Fire. (The English translation for the club's name is the Lame Horse.) There is plenty of video. There was only one exit, which was upstairs, and there was no way for everyone to evacuate up the single stairway. They pretended there was no real problem until it was far too late. I know there is plenty of video on You Tube of that tragedy. Or should I say atrocity? That same disaster had occurred so many times before, particularly in US nightclubs. There was no excuse. Oleg, that sad event is one that really hurts me, right in my heart, more than most, at least among nightclub disasters. There was no excuse! Thank you for bringing it up. I hope others will see your post or mine and look it up. People need to know. People have no idea about safety when they enter a club. They just want to drink and have fun, which is natural. That's what they're for. But some have such appalling safety conditions, and we never find out until dozens or even hundreds have been killed. When people go out clubbing, they should look at crowd safety and evacuation issues. Have fun where you are, but learn, and let that inform you about which clubs you's prefer to give your business to. You probably will never see a fire at a club you're visiting, but if you do, will you be one more number on the list of needless deaths? Sorry if this is a bit of a rant. Obviously I feel strongly about this event and others like it.

@@olegtrushin6220 Maybe the saddest part of the Lame Horse Fire story is that it isn't well known outside of Russia. People who study such disasters know it well though. There are so many lessons to learn from that disaster, and so many questions, like, why didn't they learn about these dangers from all those deadly club fires that happened before? That one question has led to safety improvements. When we know more about the reasons for lax safety, we can develop ways to encourage and enforce compliance. The good news is that we have learned from that terrible tragedy. Night clubs around the world are safer because of it.

Wow, thanks for this information Jürgen, I had never heard of this spray. Amazing.

@@SecretSquirrelFun I do not know however if the use of this detector spray is limited to qualified personnel (i.e. the guys who inspect the gas counters in your house).

@@jurgenkuhlmann9194 - I’d say that it would be!!! Imagine if anyone could purchase it!! OMG people would be showing their friends - Hey, check this out, I just have to turn the gas stove on for a little while and then I’ll show you what it does!! I can imagine all sorts of dangerous scenarios. I seriously hope that it’s an “industry only” product or has some kind of regulations attached to its purchase etc etc. 🐿

@@SecretSquirrelFun Exactly! This is why you don't find it at Home Depot (Germany: Toom, Bauhaus, OBI)! I'm sure it's for professional use only.

@@jurgenkuhlmann9194 - yes, I’m in Sydney, Australia and I hope it’s not available at any of the big hardware stores. Like I said before, I can clearly imagine some quite amusing, albeit terribly dangerous scenarios. I’m still really glad that you mentioned it. I had never heard of such a product and I found that, and the concept of it really interesting. I ended up online (down the rabbit hole) reading about it, and then all sorts of other gas related safety issues and products. Ha ha, I’ve read so much stuff that at this point in time I think that I would pass a “gas safety, work place induction test” if I had to 🤪 Anyway, wishing you a very happy new year, stay safe, be kind and let’s hope that together we all make 2021 a fantastic year 🐿

Really? Glad we could help out.

There are actually numerous documentaries on the school explosion.

London Museum Thanks. There are several documents and books on the explosion.

I bought the book Gone at 3:17... Good read...

@@marlainirving actually there are some, like the feature-length documentary "When Even Angels Wept" www.imdb.com/title/tt1531952/

It was a terrible disaster.

If only the shop class was doing something that didn't require a power tool, this would not have happened.

have you ever seen the government being proactive? they thrive on crisis and use one to create another. and, without forcing the neighboring towns to create one big school, this would have never happened. big schools are big business.

One thing I find odd was despite being odorless at the time the oil industry was huge there and all around. You would think the school nurse, teacher etc.. would see something was wrong with the type and amount of illnesses reported. This was oil country and those drilling surely ought to be familiar with symptoms of gas entering the air. That being said if it was gradual your thought process would suffer, like hypoxia above 10k in a plane if depressurized. Except this was over days where you would be breathing normal air after leaving.

D S , Yes, in fact. The E.U. is incredibly proactive and establishes strong safety standards to prevent disasters based on science and reason, not corporate lobbyists, but then people bellyache that things are over-regulated. The U.S. applies “tombstone technology” to save money and maximize profits, only changing standards in reaction to major disasters. Take a look, for example, at all of the TSA recommendations that the FAA hasn’t implement because the airline industry says they’re too expensive.

@Les, Why would they? The EU and the TSA have no relationship to one another.

Shell-shock did but mostly only for soldiers.

Lol

I now right😂😂

Be safe

Thanks for watching

natural gas wasn't used much then. it was mostly burned off as a waste byproduct. so there was little knowledge of symptoms of exposure. also, without an odorant added to it, there might not have been any way at all to detect gas leakage. with thousands of cu ft of crawl space under the bldg, collecting gas from the leaky line, this school was a disaster waiting to happen.

Many students were sent home sick in the days leading up to the explosion. They weren’t just ignored. Natural gas is odorless, so there was no way to detect the leak. My grandfather is Bill Thompson, who is featured in this documentary.

True enough, the but show was originally produced for a Canadian audience and there ain't no miles in Canada.

G Kess, not only is it produced in Canada, but U.S. imperial measurements are now all standardized metrically. In the U.S., legally, a foot is defined as 0.305 meters and an inch as 2.54 centimeters. You’re using metric whether you think you are or aren’t.

@@inkyguy were not talking about that go away

@@BadDayHQ k

k

Thanks for your comment.

Thanks for letting us know Jeff.

In 1927, Alaska and Hawaii became part of the USA.

McLaren 302 , Alaska and Hawaii didn’t become states until 1959. That’s when the 49th and 50th stars were added to the flag, geesh.

Most of the footage in this is a dramatized recreation, not actual footage.

bower31, a good re-enactment is not apparently anachronistic.

@@Mclaren302 That has nothing to do with the 48 star US flag

Not the right type of comment for this topic

Well in texas

The original was stolen, so now they show a copy instead.

Thanks for adding to our story Erin.

@@user47738 .. Well they should.

@@user47738 Are you calling Erin Splawn a liar? She goes to school there. Who am I supposed to believe? Do you go to school there? Huh.

@@user47738 Mustn't have been a very good school. You don't know how to spell I. I'll bet you say "Should of" instead of "Should have". But I believe you.

@@user47738 Hey, I was,only kidding about the school.

That's great! What part did you play?

@@BadDayHQ great to know the memory is still kept alive and these babies are not forgotten!!

Did u all die at the end hope so 😎😎😎😎😎

They did. Many students were sent home with headaches and nausea in the days leading up to the explosion.

It was a tragedy and served to prove why scent needed to be added to natural gas. Being brand new didn't have anything to do with not understanding the importance of scenting it for detection. They talked about the school had anything they wanted. Were they to have realized the importance something would have been installed.

They didn't know a whole lot about natural Gas at the time. I mean they thought it was worthless byproduct of oil. Pumping it into the school for free. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Melissa Johnson Yup its crazy how things have changed in the gas/oil industry. Made kerosene and dumped what would become gas and diesel, then made gas and just wasted diesel. Now diesel costs more than gasoline or kerosene.

Rkf rkf My husband works on a offshore production platform. So they separate the oil and natural gas and send it down the pipes to the onshore refineries. The gas doesn't have a smell at that point, that gets added at the refineries. Instead they rely on a plethora of alarms to detect gas leaks. Which scares me lol. Deepwater horizon wasn't destroyed by the blow out or oil, it was destroyed by natural gas, that like in this situation, blew up by one small spark. But these rigs are state of the art and had DWH followed the safety protocols and not bypassed several of those important alarms, it would still be in use today. I say that to say this.....I can not even begin to imagine how incredibly dangerous it was to work with natural gas back when this happened. I'm sure there are hundreds of other stories just like this that's never been told.

That's my chat up line with women, I explain to them how they add the smell to gas.

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It’s a federal law.

It is not currently on our list to consider but I will add it. We will check it out.

Back in that day there was no "junior high" like today. Only primary and secondary.

Uhm 8th grade is Junior High and 9th grade is high school so it’s possible lol

Elementary went to fourth grade, and 5th through 12th was considered high school. My grandfather is Bill Thompson who is featured in this documentary. He was in the 5th grade.

I'm pretty sure statute of limitations had passed.