1956 — Dec 3, Luckenbach Steamship Co. pier fire, detonators explode, Brooklyn, NY– 10

— 10 Daily Messenger, Canandaigua, NY. “Police Probe Mystery of Blast, Fire.” 12-5-1956, 1.
— 10 Hashagen, Paul. Fire Department [NYC]…An Illustrated History 1865 to 2002. 2002, 85.
— 10 National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). Key Dates in Fire History. 1996.
— 10 NFPA. “Large Loss Aircraft Fires of 1956.” Quarterly, V.50, N.4, April 1957, p. 330.
— 10 Syracuse Herald-Journal, NY. “Atomic Materials Feared as Fire Hits Pier…,” 12-4-1956.
— 10 Syracuse Herald-Journal, NY. “Blast Rocks Brooklyn Pier.” 12-3-1956, p. 1.

Narrative Information

Hashagen: “At 3:16 p.m. on December 3, 1956, the Brooklyn Central Office received a phone alarm for a fire on the Luckenback Steamship Pier at the foot of 35th Street, Brooklyn… The first arriving unit…arrived to an advanced fire in the 175- x 1740-foot pier structure. The building was typical of most piers; it was one story, with corrugated iron, a tarred roof and a concrete deck. The flame of an acetylene torch accidentally ignited stored foam rubber and spread toward hundreds of boxes of detonators…..

“The fireboat Fire Fighter was close to the center of the blast and sustained serious damage. Several of the crew were injured badly and several were thrown into the water. Those men were rescued by other firemen….

“The explosion took the lives of 10 civilians and injured 250 more….” (Hashagen, Paul. Fire Department City of New York. The Bravest: An Illustrated History 1865 to 2002. Paducah, KY: Turner Publishing Co., 2002, p. 85.)

National Fire Protection Association: “Dec. 3, New York (Brooklyn) N.Y., Luckenbach Steamship Co., et al, $7,600,000; 10 killed

“Twenty-five minutes after fire broke out on this pier an explosion occurred that killed 10 pier employees and spectators and injured 247. The pier was 1,748 ft. long by 150 ft. wide. Principal features were a 14-in. thick reinforced concrete pier deck on wood piling topped by a two-inch asphalt wearing surface. A steel-framed, metal-clad pier shed extending the length of the pier was protected by dry pipe sprinkler systems supplied by an 8-in. pier main. Draft curtains were installed so that not more than 200 sprinklers were between adjacent curtains.

“The pier was heavily loaded with combustible materials including flammable liquids, baled sisal, foam rugger and Cordeau deronant [detonating cord] fuse, the latter a shipment of 37,000 pounds gross weight in 1,950 cartons. This quantity is estimated to contain about 7 ½ tons of a Class A explosive.

“Sparks from a welding torch being used to repair the roof of the storage shed are said to have landed on a large pile of burlap-wrapped foam rubber. An exact account of what happened during the next few minutes is not available, but from a knowledge of the rapid flame-spread characteristics of burlap and the intense and rapid burning characteristics of foam rubber it can be surmised that an intense and rapid-spreading fire enveloped the pile of foam rubber and extended to other piles of congested storage. Sprinklers probably opened without appreciable delay and held the fire beneath in check during the first few minutes, but with the fire spreading rapidly to other congested cargo ahead of the opening sprinklers, so many must have opened in the draft curtain area of origin and in adjacent areas that the water supply was quickly overtaxed. The fire was out of control when the first fire apparatus arrived.

“Twenty-five minutes after the first alarm a terrific explosion occurred at about the midpoint of the pier. It was this explosion that caused the casualties and widespread property damage. In addition to a hole 175 ft. by 75 blown in the pier, the explosion moved an adjacent pier out of line 15 to 18 inches and broke sprinkler piping. Neighboring buildings were extensively damaged and windows several miles away were broken. Since the only explosive material or material with similar explosive properties known to be on the pier was the Cordeau detonant fuse it is assumed that the pile of cartons of fuse detonated en masse.

“Twenty-five firemen in the pier shed were knocked down and the seven-man crew of a fireboat were blown into the water, but miraculously no fire fighters were killed. By 6:40 P.M., three hours and 27 minutes after its start, the fire was under control.” (National Fire Protection Association. “Large Loss Aircraft Fires of 1956.” Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 4, April 1957, p. 330.)

Newspapers

Dec 3: “New York (AP) — A big fire, and a shattering explosion that shook buildings a mile or more away, broke out on a Brooklyn pier today. Huge columns of black smoke, laced by red flames, rose from Pier 37, just across the East River from Manhattan.” (Syracuse Herald-Journal, NY. “Blast Rocks Brooklyn Pier.” 12-3-1956, p. 1.)

Dec 4: “Fire Commissioner Edward F. Cavanagh Jr., today asked the Army, to check whether there may have been any atomic materials oh the Brooklyn pier which caught fire and exploded yesterday, killing 10 and injuring 247.

“The death toll increased to 10 when Charles Tierney, an 8-year-old boy who had been watching
the firefighting efforts as the blast occurred, succumbed to injuries at a hospital.

“As firemen continued efforts to quench the smoking ruins, Cavanagh told newsmen he had asked the army to send experts with Geiger counters, which could detect any atomic materials in the debris. It was understood that considerable material was on the pier at the time for shipment to the West Coast, but its nature was not immediately learned.

“Police, fire department officials and the Brooklyn district attorney’s office launched full-scale probes of the disastrous blast, which shook the city for miles around and caused damage estimated at 10 million dollars.

“City sanitation trucks carted away an estimated 1,800 barrels of broken glass and other debris from the area hardest hit, a rectangle roughly two miles long and a quarter of a mile wide. Thousands of windows were shattered. Sanitation officials said cleanup men began this task as soon as possible yesterday because children had begun to play with dangerous slivers of glass and other materials picked up in the streets.

“A dock worker said the fire started about 3:15 p.m. in a pile of foam rubber on the big pier, longest marine terminal in the city. Minute by minute the flames ate toward a mountain of explosive cargo — paint, lacquer, rubber cement, chemicals and fuels.

“Firemen, dock workers, schoolboys and other spectators rushed to the scene — unaware of the impending peril. Suddenly a sheet of flame shot skyward. The blast ripped off the pier shed’s metal and glass roof and showered the area with a deadly hail of fragments. The shock radiated 35 miles from the explosion. Windows were shattered five miles away. Chunks of white-hot steel weighing as much as 50 pounds arched over the waterfront.

“The blast killed three boys in their tracks. The dock workers and three other men were also killed. One was decapitated. Screaming ambulances raced away with the scores of injured, many of them spectators. Hospitals were soon jammed.

“The pier — long as six football fields — juts into New York Harbor. The towers of lower Manhattan’s financial district stand a short way across the water….” (Syracuse Herald-Journal, NY. “Atomic Materials Feared as Fire Hits Pier…,” 12-4-1956.)

Dec 5: “New York – AP – Puzzled police and fire officials probed the blackened skeleton of a Brooklyn pier again today in hope of learning what sparked Monday’s mysterious blaze and blast. Army bomb experts and the city fire commissioner both expressed doubt yesterday that the known cargo piled on the big pier powered the tremendous explosion.

“The blast that followed the outbreak of fire killed 10 and injured 216, many of them spectators lured by the sight of smoke and flame. The shock wave shattered windows for miles around in the industrial area.

“The explosion blew a gaping crater in the heavy concrete floor of the pier, lined wood piling below splintered like matchsticks. The hole measured 150 by 75 feet. Maj. William Vallassa, a First Army ordnance officer, peered into the crater and commented that the strength of the blast equaled that of two 4,000 pound World War II blockbuster bombs.

“Fire Commissioner Edward F. Cavanagh Jr. said he was ‘certain’ the known cargo on the pier could not have produced the blast. The cargo included highly combustible paint, lacquer, rubber cement, chemicals, fuels, petroleum, naphtha, powdered resin, alcohol and other materials. ‘Something unknown to the steamship company or to the dock workers must have been on that pier,’ said Cavanagh. ‘It is within the realm of possibility, if not probability, that there could have been in the cargo at that point some substance or shipment that was fraudulently and deceitfully marked as something else that was going out of the country.’ Cavanaugh estimated damage at 15 million dollars.” (Daily Messenger, Canandaigua, NY. “Police Probe Mystery of Blast, Fire.” 12-5-1956, p. 1.)

Sources

Daily Messenger, Canandaigua, NY. “Police Probe Mystery of Blast, Fire.” 12-5-1956, p. 1. At: http://newspaperarchive.com/fullpagepdfviewer?img=55176310&sterm

Hashagen, Paul. Fire Department City of New York. The Bravest: An Illustrated History 1865 to 2002. Paducah, KY: Turner Publishing Co., 2002. Partially Google Digitized at: http://books.google.com/books?id=ubGf6Z15CiIC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

National Fire Protection Association. Key Dates in Fire History. 1996. Accessed 2010 at: http://www.nfpa.org/itemDetail.asp?categoryID=1352&itemID=30955&URL=Research%20&%20Reports/Fire%20statistics/Key%20dates%20in%20fire%20history&cookie%5Ftest=1

National Fire Protection Association. “Large Loss Aircraft Fires of 1956.” Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 4, April 1957. Boston, MA.

Syracuse Herald-Journal, NY. “Atomic Materials Feared as Fire Hits Pier…,” 12/4/1956. Accessed at: http://www.newspaperarchive.com/FullPagePdfViewer.aspx?img=22484564

Syracuse Herald-Journal, NY. “Blast Rocks Brooklyn Pier.” 12-3-1956, p. 1. Accessed at: http://newspaperarchive.com/fullpagepdfviewer?img=22484559&sterm=brooklyn+fire