From the Publishers Desk
Wrecks and Explosions Can Happen Anywhere
We live in a world that has increasingly become a dangerous place to live no matter where you live. Most of us are unaware of this danger and we go about our daily work and play wrapped in a blanket of security, blithely ignoring or ignorant of what can suddenly happen—out of nowhere.
Such was the attitude of the people in Waverly, Tenn., a rural town of 5000 located 60 miles west of Nashville. Such, also, was the attitude of the people of Baltimore, one of the nation’s largest cities. But in Waverly, and in a matter of seconds, 25 people died and 90 were injured by an explosion and fireball. And in Baltimore, 300,000 persons were affected by a low-lying cloud of sulfuric acid that taxed the efforts of the Baltimore City and County Fire Departments and a large number of volunteer departments downwind from the lethal cloud.
In both incidents, the fire departments performed marvelously under the most trying of circumstances which you will discover on reading the two stories in this issue by our correspondent, John D. Peige.
As the chief of Baltimore pointed out, “Our disaster plans are designed to localize the incident, establish safe parameters and evacuate those in danger. But how do you quickly evacuate hundreds of thousands of people? We’ll have to consider this incident with respect to designing our future disaster plans. And we are not alone. This could happen almost anywhere over the state.” And almost anywhere in the country, we might add.
Peige notes in the article on the Waverly fire that investigators are now asking, “What went wrong? Why did the propane tanker rupture 40 hours after the initial derailment when safety precautions were being taken?” According to Peige, who visited the scene of the explosion right after it occurred, there is a theory that is being given consideration—and fire fighters everywhere should put this theory in their mental notebook against the day they might run against the same problem.
