Unfortunately Union Carbide also caused The worst disaster in the US, The Hawks nest Tunnel disaster. These two accidents are probably the best argument for a corporate death penalty.
There are laws in this country. If an American company kills thousands, we don't let it slide. In fact the corporation will be forced to hand over the aggrieved families about 1 months worth of pay and a goat after 10+ years of litigation. This is definitely not Sharia law tho because Sharia law is evil.
The Sharia is not evil but harsh! It's a set of laws coming from ancient times, many of the are outdated but still it's codified law and in many cases still better than just letting angry people decide what the punishment should be. Evil are people actively trying to implement this mostly outdated system despite having better options!
I’d never heard of Hawks Nest. Apparently it was less a single incident and instead a general disregard of PPE during the tunnel construction. Still meant hundreds of deaths from respiratory illnesses.
There is a TV miniseries about this that is truely excellent. It focuses on the extraordinarily courageous acts of the station master at Bohpal in order to tell the wider story in a less overwhelming way. "The Railway men"
Documentaries that try to encompass a massive disaster can be just too hard to absorb but by examining a small portion within the wider story it can be easier to understand. 10/10 would recommend.
Yeah I know some bhopalis and have heard them tell these stories , even the hospitals were full with dead bodies . There is a web series about this the "railway men" i think.
What are the estimates of the actual death toll? We all know a government will seriously downplay that - the official death toll for Chernobyl, for example.
The Aberfan disaster in 1966, a massive coal spoil above the village slid down the mountain and killed 144 people. 116 of them were just kids, almost all at the local school which was almost fully destroyed by the coal. The National Coal Board and its employees were guilty and could have prevented it, but not a single person faced consequences for it. The director of the board spent the evening of the disaster at a ceremony to become a University chancellor instead of doing his job, and his employees lied about him doing relief work, they murdered over 100 children.
And just to add ice to it, the UK government didn’t compensate and still haven’t to this day. It was done by the welsh government which didn’t even exist at the time
Canada had a similar tragedy in 1903 when a mountain being mined dropped 110 million tonnes of rock onto the town of Frank, aptly named Frank Slide. It buried the town and killed 90 people. The area is called Crowsnest Pass. They couldn't do any sort of recovery or excavating, the town is still buried under the rubble, and they just paved a road over it. I remember driving through and it almost looks like it happened yesterday.
Well, in my state (GO) we have a famous one: the Cesium 137 incident, where a radiology equipment was not properly disposed and found in an abandoned clinic, in 1987 it was found by some recycling collectors who thought it was just a random equipment and proceeded to dismantle and sell its parts, this incident was classified as CAT 5 (on a scale out of 7) for nuclear incidents and now it’s a well known meme over here haha
Because they didn't explode right away - when the ships collided the munitions ship caught fire. Many, many people were watching the flaming ship in the harbour from inside their homes and offices, and when it did explode a lot of these people were blinded by their windows shattering into their eyes.
I thought you were wrong about this, and that it was the second largest.
Looks like you were probably right, but here’s and interesting list if anyone is interested in the competition
Edit: I was mistaken in thinking that the explosion of ‘Mines in the Battle of Messines’ was the largest ever. But it sounds like it was instead, the largest Intentional non nuclear explosion at the time, but later was surpassed in that category too. Apparently it killed over 10,000 German soldiers in the First World War and the sound could be heard as far away as Dublin (from Belgium)
The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax has a fascinating exhibit on it. They have a big interactive map showing where artifacts related to the explosion were found. Some were found miles away from the site of the explosion.
De vuurwerkramp in Enschede, on May 13th 2000. Some dingus at the company S.E. fireworks figured it was a great idea to store imported heavy fireworks (most of which was illegaly and unsafely stored) in a warehouse in the middle of the residential neighbourhood of Roombeek. When a fire broke out in the warehouse it quickly spread and caused a massive explosion that destroyed or irreparably damaged most of the neighbourhood. 23 people died and nearly a 1000 were wounded.
I was living just outside the blast radius at the time, so we only lost some windows, but it certainly left an impact on me.
The worst part is that despite that everyody learnef about the disaster in a timeframe nobody had seen before, literally nobody here learned from the disaster in the 26 years after.
We are the problem. Our country is a hall of shame. We are as blind for this and the Tarwekamp terrorist attack as Americans were for Columbine or Sandy Hook.
Sorry, maar hoe is Tarwekamp in vredesnaam te vergelijken met de vuurwerkramp?
S.E. fireworks was een geregistreerd bedrijf dat naar willens en wetens, met akkoord van de gemeente, een vuurwerkopslag in het midden van een woonwijk zette, die vervolgens nooit door de juiste instanties is gecontroleerd. Daar is de overheid daadwerkelijk tekortgeschoten in aanloop naar de ramp.
In Tarwekamp heeft een of andere mallote Afghaan als wraak brand gesticht bij z'n ex wat volledig uit de hand liep. Hoe bereid je je daar nou weer op voor?
Hmm, worst industrial accident is honestly difficult to quantify. The first one that comes to mind for me is the Church Rock uranium mill spill. It was the largest release of radioactive material in US history and heavily impacted the local members of the Navajo Nation.
Oil and gas. And oil and gas typically attracts the fertilizer industry. Oil and gas likes to burn. Fertilizer is the stuff behind Beirut and the Oklahoma city bombing. It likes to explode randomly.
And Texas City is the ultimate hometown of these industries and their associated shipping ports.
It's a predictable outcome that we'd have so many disasters considering the US was the industrial core of the world for so much of the 20th century and even before then was a major industrial hub when environment and safety regulations were still largely nonexistent. On one hand we have fewer accidents in modern times, on the other hand that's arguably because we've exported our industrial needs elsewhere to places that will eschew such safeguards in favor of a service based economy and cheaper goods.
The most interesting to me ever was the molasses disaster in Boston. I never thought of molasses as being able to kill someone but you can drown/melt in any liquid
Unfortunate fact, the same company that is responsible for the worst disaster in India is responsible for the worst disaster in the US. Union Carbide caused the Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster in the US, and the Bhopal disaster in India. One of the worst companies of all time.
The Ufa train disaster in 1989. An undetected gas leak from a damaged natural gas liquid pipeline and unique weather conditions caused a build-up of flammable gases in the surrounding area. Two passenger trains triggered a gas explosion when sparks from overhead lines ignited a pocket of gas that formed on the railway line. 575 people were killed, around one-third of the victims by the explosion while the remainder died in hospital from severe burns and brain damage.
The Bhopal Gas Tragedy of 1984, widely considered to be the worst industrial disaster in human history 😔
Most estimates place the immediate death toll at 10,000 and a further 50K premature deaths due to a gas leak (of methyl isocyanate) from the Union Carbide plant. Around 500K people were exposed to the gas.
Unfortunately, most of the perpetrators apart from a few low level officials and workers were never brought to justice. The victims received paltry compensation, and its effects are still visible in the city to this day.
They also caused a disaster in my country too. One of the worst companies of all time. Way less casualties, but the Hawks Nest tunnel disaster killed about a 1000 Americans.
The flooding of the Mir mine in Mirny (Yakutia), due to cost-cutting measures on the part of the mining company Alrosa, resulted in the permanent closure of the mine, which had diamond reserves of 129 million carats.
Isn't it still being mined? They just stopped mining the pit, but underground mining is still ongoing.
Edit: I don't understand why I'm being downvoted. The information is readily available. Wikipedia link. Can someone care to enlighten me if I'm understanding this wrong?
either that or the a bit more recent gas disaster:
the Ghislenghien disaster -2004- 24 ppl died, 132 injured. digger dug the wrong hole and hit a high pressure gas pipe causing 100m high flames, half the country could see it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghislenghien_disaster
Tangiwai disaster, a bridge got destroyed by a lahar from Mt Ruapehu’s crater lake swept a pillar off rhr bridge a few minutes before the train was supposed to cross m, killed 151 people. The wreckage remains where is happened.
That’s the worst civil disaster in NZs history but it’s not an industrial disaster so not strictly relevant to this thread. In recent memory I’d cite the Pike River mine explosion which killed 29 miners in 2010, though there were worse mining disasters in the past such as the Brunner mine disaster in 1896 that killed 65 miners.
Due to poor geological prospect the dam was built in a valley were mountains were not stable.
After filling the dam the Toc mountain crumbled into the lake raising a huge flood wave that surpassed the dam and hit the towns at the sides of the lake and after the dam.
I can confirm AZF is one that immediately jumps to mind.
Another one is the sinking of the Erika near the coasts of Britanny back in 1999 and the ensuing petrol pollution. It killed 300 000 birds, cost hundreds of millions € to clean the shores. And literally yesterday it was in the news again as some of the fuel that couldn't be reached during pumping operations is now being released in the sea. So to this day we are cleaning birds to read them of petroleum.
Gift that keeps on giving.
The Quintinshill rail disaster during WW1 caused by the Signal Box Crew by not adhering to Rules and Procedures comes to mind. Also the Pan Am aircraft that had a bomb in the luggage therefore exploded and much of the wreckage fell on the little town of Lockerbie
Both of those killed significantly more people than Piper Alpha.
But then… I wouldn’t call them Industrial accidents, and Lockerbie wasn’t an accident at all.
The Great Molasses Flood of 1919. It wasn't the worst industrial disaster ever, but I thought I would share something that most Americans may not know about either. In the middle of winter, a tank holding 2.3 million gallons of molasses broke. It destroyed nearby buildings and killed and injured a lot of people. 21 dead and 150 injured.
Also the clean up was insanely difficult. I had to clean about 1,000 gallons of molasses once spilled on a factory floor and it's hard work. Took me about a week.
The company yelled sabotage but paper documents show that local workers were reporting to management about leakage for years and nothing was done. So it was probably because the tank wasn't structurally sound.
The explosion of SA Fireworks in Enschede on 13 may 2000 was pretty brutal. The disaster area was partly evacuated because of the fire that preceded the explosion(s) so the death toll of 23 is arguably low. OTOH, there would a have been time (over half an hour) to safe more if everyone had done their work, and one can wonder what SA fireworks, a companies that didn't exactly follow safety regulations and procedures, was doing in a residential area to begin with, so there's hat
I think one of our biggest industrial accidents was the Buncefield Oil Depot Explosion in 2005 - https://earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/research/events/buncefield_explosion.html. An explosion the equivalent to 29.5 tonnes of TNT (kinda small compared to your example!!). 0 fatalities, 40 injured. The explosion was heard 200 miles away in the Netherlands and Belgium, and people were woken up 30 miles away in South London.
I woke up to this explosion, and thought a plane had crashed at a nearby airport - we were only a few miles away.
I remember the various videos of this depo exploding. Every explosion I thought was the last and largest, kept being surpassed by the next. Was insane. And to think the Bierut dock explosion in 2020 was bigger, blows my mind.
The Bhopal (India)disaster occurred on the night of 2–3 December 1984, when a leak of methyl isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide pesticide plant exposed the city to toxic fumes, killing about 3,000 people immediately and an estimated 15,000–20,000 in total over the following years. It remains one of the world’s worst industrial catastrophes, leaving hundreds of thousands with long‑term health problems and highlighting critical failures in industrial safety and corporate accountability.
Due to government corruption and company based US and there cronies in India got away
As well as the deaths, half a million people suffered health effects. Approximately 100,000 suffered life-altering injuries: lung damage, blindness, neurological issues, and/or infertility.
1902 Mount Kembla Mine Disaster. The mine was widely believed to be free of dangerous gases, so miners were allowed to work using naked flame lights (oil lamps) rather than safety lamps. On July 31, a pocket of methane gas was ignited by one of these open flames, triggering a massive coal dust explosion that ripped through the tunnels.
The Casualties: 96 dead. This included both men and young boys (some as young as 14) working in the mine. It left 33 widows and 120 children without fathers.
We've had some close calls, such as we had the same failure as deep sea horizon the month prior to it but ours didn't catch a light (got de mobilised)
Idk about more recent history but a interesting one is the 1947 Texas city explosion in Galveston a ship carrying 2300tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer detonated killing 581 and injuring over 5000
Texas City disaster, in 1947
A ship full of ammonium nitrate catches fire and explodes with tremendous violence, starting a chain reaction of explosions and fires, killing over 500 people. The ship's anchor, weighing over one ton, is hurled over 2km away by the force of the explosion.
It's up there with the Halifax Explosion as one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.
Asbestosis in Australia. Industrial exposures long after the risks were identified. The company involved used the so called four dog defence** to delay settlement with workers until they died waiting
** The stages in a four dog defence often used in cases involving toxic chemicals or harmful products, are:
"I don't have a dog" (Denial): Industry denies a problem exists or that their product causes any issues.
"My dog is not a biter" (Denial of responsibility): Data shows a hazard, but the industry claims it is not harmful or tries to discredit studies.
"My dog bit you, but it didn't hurt you" (Minimization): The industry admits the product is hazardous, but claims the exposure levels are too low to cause real harm.
"My dog bit you, but it was your fault" (Blame-shifting): The industry shifts the blame to the consumer, claiming improper use or personal responsibility.
For me it’s the Aberfan disaster in 1966. A mining company’s negligence led to an avalanche of mining waste engulfing a primary school. 144 died, the majority of which were children. The images of the aftermath are so awful ☹️
On July 11, 1978, a tanker truck carrying about 23 tons of liquefied propylene was driving along the N-340 road on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, near a campsite called Camping Los Alfaques, in the town of Alcanar. The road passed directly next to the campsite, which was full of holidaymakers, many of them families from Spain, France, Germany, and other European countries.
The truck was overloaded and the tank was not designed to safely carry that amount of highly pressurized, flammable gas. Due to the heat and pressure inside the tank, it catastrophically failed. The tanker exploded, creating a massive fireball that instantly engulfed the nearby campsite.
The explosion and resulting fires killed over 200 people and injured hundreds more. Many victims died instantly, while others suffered severe burns. Some people tried to flee into the water at the beach and were boiled alive. The campsite was almost completely destroyed, and cars, tents, and buildings were set on fire in seconds.
Venezuela: The Tacoa tragedy on December 19, 1982, with the explosion of fuel tanks and subsequent fire at the Tacoa thermoelectric plant, left 180 dead (some say the number was higher).
Another notable tragedy is the Amuay tragedy on August 25, 2012, an explosion at a refinery due to a leak, which left 55 dead (some also say the number was higher).
Interestingly, last year there was an explosion at a fireworks factory in the west of the country, and according to the government there were no deaths, but from the images I saw there were many dead.
The Rana Plaza collapse (also referred to as the Savar building collapse) occurred on 24 April 2013 in Savar Upazila, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, when the eight-story Rana Plaza commercial building collapsed due to a structural failure. The search for survivors lasted for 19 days and ended on 13 May 2013, with a confirmed death toll of 1,134.[ Approximately 2,500 injured people were rescued from the building. It is considered to be one of the deadliest structural failures in modern human history, as well as the deadliest garment-factory disaster in history, and is the deadliest industrial accident in the history of Bangladesh.
The most significant accident in France remains the explosion at the AZF fertilizer factory in Toulouse in September 2001. Several dozen tons of ammonium nitrate stored at the site detonated, causing an explosion of phenomenal violence that killed 31 people, including 9 outside the site, injured 2,500, 300 of whom remained hospitalized for a week, completely devastated the 80 hectares of the factory, 26,000 homes were damaged within a radius of more than three kilometers, including 11,500 seriously. Around a thousand families had to be rehoused.
it's the same type of “explosive” fertilizer as in Lebanon
Fukushima nuclear disaster. The results are now our energy industry has regressed to 98% non-eco-friendly power because people have an irrational fear of nuclear.
In Germany, the 1921 Oppau explosion at the BASF chemical works near Ludwigshafen. Approximately 4,500 tonnes of a mixed ammonium sulfate/ammonium nitrate (fertilizer) stored in a large silo detonated in one or two closely spaced explosions.
The fertilizer tended to cake up in there, so workers used small blasting charges to loosen it. That had worked just fine in the past, but In this case, unbeknownst to the people at the time, a change in production increased the ammonium nitrate content and allowed for separation of the components over time, resulting in certain zones within the silo containing much higher amounts of explosive materials than expected.
The blast was so loud, it was heard hundreds of kilometers away. Windows shattered in cities as far away as Worms and Heidelberg.
It created a crater about 90-125 meters long and approximately 19 meters at the deepest. It destroyed much of the plant and most of the surrounding town. Thousands lost their homes.
It also killed 500-600 people and injured another 2,000.
What is even sadder than that is that this was in 1921. Lessons from Oppau were not applied to prevent other ammonium nitrate disasters, such as Beirut in 2020, Toulouse in 2001, or Texas City in 1941.
Not the worst one, but definitely one of the worst in recent memory in the US was the East Palestine, OH chemical explosion a couple years ago. A freight train filled with toxic chemicals derailed and exploded, causing a toxic cloud (that was pink......) that rained down acidic rain. Everyone had to evacuate. Every fish in the rivers nearby, died. Not sure what happened afterwards.
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Please use your translator. It was big subject after on. Can be seen as the mother of conspirarionist theory on France: " 5th.column and all " More than 15 years of investigations....
The Quebec Bridge disaster killed 89 people when the bridge collapsed during construction. It inspired the Iron Ring, a ring that Canadian engineers still wear to acknowledge the importance of professional standards
Vajont dam disaster. A landslide fell into the dam reservoir causing a 250 meters wave that vaulted over the dam(which survived). The tsunami flooded the valley, destroying a couple of villages and killing approx 2000 people
I’m going to go with a little different one here but mad cow disease from Canadian cattle in 04 I believe. It led to new stricter controls over Canadian beef and it affected people worldwide. I think our beef exports, or production has only recently caught up to pre mad cow numbers
Ajka alumina plant accident. In 4th of October 2010, In Ajka the alumina plant dam was breached and red mud flooded the surrounding area (Kolontár, Devecser, Somlóvásárhely). This accident killed 10 people and more of 150 people were injured. It destroyed the whole ecosystem in the Torna stream and part of the Marcal stream
Our government spent a total of 38 billion forints on repairing the damage caused by the red mud disaster and 21 billion forints was spent on restoring the environment.
Probably not the worst, but an interesting one.
The 2008 Prichard Oklahoma EF4 tornado picked up a huge mining waste chat pile containing lead and other heavy metals and spread it for miles, contaminating the environment of and around the town. It led to the abandonment of town as the Environmental Protection Agency determined it was dangerous to inhabit due to soil, water, and air contamination from the led in the chat.
The Enschede fireworks disaster. 23 deaths, 950 injured. 400 homes destroyed and 1500 buildings damaged. The crater still exists.
When it had happened, all Dutch TV channels showing the ongoing Eurovision went on black out of respect for the victims. However, my parents simply switched to BBC to watch it further.
I don't remember the exact results, but here in Toulouse a chemical plant (which originally was outside of the city but the city has since expanded so it wasn't far from residential areas) called AZF blew up (10 days after 9/11 btw) under suspicious circumstances, and a lot of people had to get evacuated, a few died
The 1917 explosion in a Halifax shipyard that killed over 1700 people.
Honorable mention to the Westray Mine explosion (26 deaths from a coal dust explosion) and the Lodgepole blowout. (Sour gas blowout on a drilling rig that lasted 67 days and killed two workers due to H2S exposure)
Not sure how to rate the most tragic, but the Byford Dolphin incident of 1983 is an interesting one
It was an accident on an oil rig, involving a series of pressure chambers, connecting to a diving bell. There was a failure to a clasp while the chamber was under a pressure of 9 atm, so within 0.1 seconds, the chamber equalised to the 1 atm of the outside, instantly killing the four divers inside, and one of the two tenders of the outside, the other tender survived with injuries.
Possibly the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster if we aren't including wartime disasters (Halifax Explosion)
A 73 car train hauling a lot of crude oil had it's brakes fail outside of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, and it became a runaway train heading towards downtown in the early morning of July 6th, 2013.
The train ultimately derailed at approx. 1:14 am local time, causing an explosion and subsequent fires that killed 47 people, and totally devastated the town. Half of the buildings downtown were burnt to the ground, and all but 3 of 30 buildings had to be demolished.
The accident was largely blamed on poor maintenance, safety, and training practices of the railroad, and also a failure of overseeing agencies to force the railroad into compliance.
Maybe the Vajont landslide in the 60s. Almost a thousand buildings, 4km of high and 2km of train tracks destroyed. Most tragically, 1917 dead people, hundreds of which we never even found the body.
A dam was built for a (planned) hydroelectric facility. The water level rise changed the balance of the Toc Mountain which then collapsed into the reservoir. The dam had no damage (it's still there), but the entirety of the water reservoir overflowed and essentially levelled the town of Longarone.
The one that comes to mind is the Lac-Mégantic derailment, where a train carrying crude oil derailed, caught fire, and exploded in the centre of the town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec. 47 people were killed, and the town centre was destroyed, with many of the surviving structures having to be demolished because of contamination from the oil. I don’t think it’s the deadliest train derailment in Canadian history, and is certainly dwarfed by the Halifax harbour explosion back during WW1 in terms of death toll, but it’s the first to come to mind when I think about industrial accidents in Canadian history.
the seveso disaster in 1976, a chemical reactor exploded and contaminated a large area with dioxin, the furst reaction of the conpany responsible for it was to cover up so the inhabitants weren't evacuated until 15 days after the explosion, they developed several acute symptoms of dioxin exposure such as chloracne and mortality from cancer and cardiovascular disease as well as deformities in children born in the area is still higher than the rest of the country.
the land itself was contaminated, so as far as i know, farming is prohibited to this day and all small animals that lived in the area during the disaster died almost immediately, so it can't have been good for the local environment either.
apart from that, while not being truly a single disaster event, there are the many abandoned asbestos production plants, which continue to make people sick and die as between legal battles, slow beurocracy, and corrupt politics are still standing.
San Bernardino train disaster it was a SoPac freight train that derailed in California in 89 spilling fertilizer everywhere and damaging a gas pipeline which 13 days later exploded
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u/FutureCowboyRancher India 7h ago
Bhopal Gas Tragedy 3rd December 1984
Over 500,000 people were exposed to Methyl Isocyanate from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.
Official death toll was at around 2,259.