Curtain

Woman Learned Lessons In 1947 Disaster

Filed Under Curt Hennig | Posted on April 17, 2008

Curt Hennig I am writing about my survival of the 1947 Texas City Disaster so that others who read it could learn from my experience.

Reading the newspaper about a man who had survived Japan’s atomic blast helped me survive the Texas City Disaster.

He said when he saw the atomic “mushroom shape” in the distance, knowing that light (what he actually saw) travels faster than sound (the force of the actual explosion hit), he dived behind a huge concrete boulder, which protected him from the debris that whizzed past during the tremendous atomic blast.

I must’ve made a mental note of his experience, causing my reaction that saved my life. I was a witness to the actual initial fire before there was any black smoke.

I saw the “curtain of fire with red, yellow and white streaks” shooting straight up into a beautiful sky of blue.

On the morning of April 16, 1947, I was 27 years old and resided with my family — consisting of my husband, Henry, and two children, Dona Kae and Henry Jr., at 727 Bay Street in Texas City.

This was on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Bay Street, about 12 blocks from the site of the explosion.

Looking southward through my bedroom window, I had a clear view of the Monsanto plant and the explosion site.

My husband had recently returned from overseas service and would’ve been at work at Monsanto on a pipe fitter construction job.

They were converting the old sugar plant into workspace for Monsanto’s usage. But due to a late shipment of pipes, he wasn’t to report to work this particular day.

When we awoke that morning, I put on a heavy robe — the air was a little chilly — and I went into the front yard to get the morning newspaper.

I noticed some beautiful orange-colored smoke rising from the Monsanto area. I rushed into the house, excited and called out, “Let’s all go see the fire!”

Henry, not one to rush into things, said, “No, let’s read the paper and after breakfast, perhaps we could go down onto the dike and look across the bay waters and get a better view.”

Little did I know then that his decision saved our lives, as there were a lot of spectators at the scene who lost their lives while watching the fire.

So, we snuggled back in bed to read the morning paper. Our little girl left her bed in the other room and climbed in bed between her mother and father, like little girls like to do. This saved her life, as her pillow, where she would have been, was cut to shreds by glass slivers during the explosion.

As we read the paper, probably the funnies and the sports page, as we hadn’t got to the crossword puzzle yet, I felt a sudden “jar” — a “thud” that seemed to come deep from the ground and through the bed. I immediately jumped up to look out the window.

That instantaneous reaction was because of another incident that had previously occurred. I had missed seeing a fire at Monsanto one night — because I was asleep — and due to my curiosity, I didn’t want to miss another spectacular sight there.

I will never forget what I saw — an unimaginable force (later, experts determined the 2,300 tons of fertilizer in the initial blast — at ground zero — had a greater explosive force than the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki) thrusting up curtain-like streaks of red, yellow and white heat with black lace-like edges made by matter being instantly sent a half mile high into air. No black smoke was visible to me, only fire.

Remembering that you see something before you feel it, I yelled, “Look out!” and tried to dive across the bed to get beyond the foot of it to use the bed as a shield, but I never made it Curt Hennig.

I think the window sash hit me in the back of the head and I got some bleeding cuts through my thick hair in the back of my head.

In my panic for self-survival, I didn’t think of anyone else — just diving to get behind something.

My husband said when I yelled, “Look out,” he was getting up to look out the window. It seemed that our house was picked up and shaken several times and then thrown back onto the ground.

Our roof was blown in, and almost every piece of glass in the house was broken. Slivers of glass flew across the room (sticking into the wall) and one sliver cut his eyeball as he was getting up to look out.

My little girl did get a small cut above her upper lip, and the baby boy, who was in his crib in the other room, was protected because a huge old-fashioned dresser was blown across his crib, keeping the window glass slivers from him.

My biggest concern was my husband’s slashed left eyeball. The white of his eye was protruding through a slit, and I felt I should do something about it.

I went into the kitchen, where everything was broken and there was one little bottle of boric acid powder standing in the middle of all that mess. I heated some water and put some of the boric acid powder in it.

I dribbled some of the solution onto the eye soaking the wet solution into a clean cloth. He held the clean cloth over his eye.

I knew we had to get to an eye doctor as soon as possible, so we scrambled toward the car to head for Houston. Luckily, our car was full of gasoline.

That is another lesson I learned; always have a full tank of gas in your automobile when you go to bed at night — because you never know when you might need it.

It was chaotic in Texas City following the explosion. We saw people running down Bay Street from the site of the explosion with their skin and clothes blackened.

At the time, the postal worker was delivering the mail. He said he couldn’t stop to help, as he had to deliver the mail! “The mail must go through.”

I went to my neighbor, Mr. Kramer, who was laying in his yard with his hands under his head and his eyes glazed over.

I wiped his face with my damp towel, asking him if he was all right. He replied, “Yes, I’m just waiting for my wife to return home.”

But he told someone later on that he had been unconscious and that Mrs. Criss had come over and poured some water on him and brought him to consciousness.

His wife, later, related what happened to her during the explosion while visiting with her neighbor: Slivers of broken glass were impaled onto the neighbor’s bald head, causing the blood to flow freely.

The lady emptied a bowl of sugar on top of his head to coagulate the blood. Amid the many gruesome sights of that day,Curt Hennig I do envision that one scene as amusing.

Driving toward Houston, we met ambulances from other towns scurrying toward Texas City. In Houston, we stopped at a medical clinic.

The doctors first thought they would have to remove Henry’s eye, but they recommended that we go downtown and see Dr. Robinson, an eye specialist.

We did, and while Henry held onto the arms of a chair, the doctor took six stitches — three on the inside of the eyeball and three on the outside.

He told Henry to walk on over to St. Joseph’s Hospital, about three blocks away; and when Henry questioned his being able to walk there, he said, “I operated on your eye, not your feet!”

Henry walked to the hospital and when he removed his shoe,Curt Hennig  he found glass in the bottom of his shoes.

About six weeks later, when bandages were removed from his eye, he could see how many fingers the doctor held up.

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