Gunness

Gunness wharf looking back from Flixborough
When I was wee girl Flixborough became famous for all the wrong reasons....
The Flixborough disaster was an explosion at a chemical plant close to the village of Flixborough, North Lincolnshire, England, on 1 June 1974. It killed 28 people and seriously injured 36 out of a total of only 72 people on site at the time; from the devastation on site it was clear that had the explosion happened in normal office hours the casualty figures could have been much higher. A contemporary campaigner on process safety wrote "the shock waves rattled the confidence of every chemical engineer in the country".The disaster involved (and may well have been caused by) a hasty modification. Mechanical engineering issues with the modification were overlooked by the managers (chemical engineers) who approved it, and the severity of the potential consequences of its failure was not appreciated. Flixborough led to a widespread public outcry over process plant safety. Together with the passage of the Health and Safety at Work Act in the same year it led to (and is often quoted in justification of) a more systematic approach to process safety in UK process industries.
For me personally I have very vivid memories of the explosion. We were at a works gala on the other side of town when the explosion happened. We immediately knew something big had happened and my uncle who was talking to us at the time simply said " That's Nypro" (the name of the chemical works) we returned home later in the day to my grandparents house which was on the Flixborough side of town to see many houses without glass in their windows. My grandparents loft door was dislodged in the explosion. And sadly friends from the community were some of those who lost their lives. At least something good came out of the tragedy.