Odourless Gas Triggers Deadly School Explosion

A gas explosion in 1937 was a devastating incident for residents of Texas in the United States. The deadly blast was triggered by gas that could not be detected by smell.

According to records from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, the incident was a large-scale natural gas explosion that destroyed a school building in New London, Texas. The town is in Rusk County, in the East Texas oilfields. The disaster is regarded as one of the most tragic accidents in US history.

The explosion occurred on 18 March 1937. The powerful natural gas blast struck the school in New London. It was so forceful that the building was lifted from its foundations before collapsing back to the ground. The explosion reduced the entire structure to a mass of bricks, steel and concrete.

An evacuation began immediately. The scale of the damage made fatalities unavoidable.

More than half of the pupils and teachers at the school were killed, with the death toll estimated at about 298.

The cause: odourless gas

An investigation found that raw gas, known as “green gas”, had been tapped unsafely from a pipeline carrying waste gas from the oilfields. The gas leaked from the tapping pipe and accumulated in an enclosed crawl space running along the school’s façade.

At the time, most natural gas in East Texas had no odour, meaning the build-up went undetected until it was ignited and exploded.