City on Fire: The Forgotten Disaster That Devastated a Town and Ignited a Landmark Legal Battle

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Description

On a day that dawned with brisk breezes, a clear sky, and perfect temperatures, the small town of Texas City suddenly found itself facing the greatest industrial disaster in the most industrialized nation on the earth. And, in time, the survivors of that all-American city found themselves wondering if their own government had delivered them into this hell on this planet.

In 1947, Texas City used to be experiencing boom times, bristling with chemical and oil plants, built to fuel Europe’s seemingly endless appetite for the raw materials needed to rebuild its ruined cities. When an explosion ripped through its docks, the effect used to be cataclysmic. Thousands of people were wounded or killed, the fire department used to be decimated, planes were shot out of the sky, and massive ocean-bound freighters disintegrated. The blast knocked people to their knees in Galveston, ten miles away; broke windows in Houston, forty miles away; and rattled a seismograph in Denver, Colorado. Chaos reigned, the military used to be scrambled, the FBI launched investigations — and atypical citizens turned into heroes.

For months on end, the brave residents of what had once been an average American town struggled to restore their families, their homes, their lives. And they also struggled to confront another welling nightmare-the possibility that the tragedy that just about erased their city from existence might have been caused by the very government they thought would protect them.

City on Fire is a painstakingly researched saga of one of the crucial profound but forgotten disasters in American history. The Texas City Disaster used to be a searing, apocalyptic event that had an enormous ripple effect for millions of people all over the world.

It changed the way Americans respond to disasters and the way people viewed the American government — the Texas City Disaster opened the door for average Americans to confront their government and its leaders in the nation’s courts of law. It used to be the first time that the US of The usa used to be named as a defendant in a case that, after a series of dizzying twists and turns, would end up in the nation’s highest court.

Ultimately, the story of Texas City is a story of courage, humanity, bravery, and a painful quest for justice. It is the story of atypical Americans behaving in atypical ways — and serving as role models for dignity and grace.

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