Today’s history is associated with the terrible and painful tragedy in which 295 school students and teachers lost their lives due to a mistake. The incident took place in the city of Texas, USA and that tragedy is known as the New London School Explosion. 88 years ago, on March 18, 1937, there was such a severe explosion at the New London school in the city of Texas on March 18, 1937, that the school was burnt to ashes. The scene showed at the accident site after that explosion shook the hearts of the people. The accident was called the third most deadly accident in the history of Texas after the 1900 Galton Disaster and the 1947 Texas City tragedy. Let us know what happened on 18 March 1937?
In this way this accident happened.
According to the records recorded in history, it was Friday, 18 March 1937 and school was studying as usual. The New London School was newly built in Eastern Texas. The children were waiting for the afternoon holiday. The PTA meeting was going on in the auditorium, built 100 feet from the main building of the school and the parents were with their children. Small children were performing dance performances in the auditorium. Exams were also going on. Preparations for the weekend sports competition were going on on the field.
The main building had about 500 students and 40 teachers. Suddenly a teacher Lemmi R. Butler turned on the electric sander. During this time, the spark came out of the sander’s switch, causing a fire in the gas filled in the basement. This led to a terrible explosion, which collapsed the school building. The roof rises above the building and fell loudly. The school walls started falling. Bricks, glass and wooden beams started flying in the air. Everything was destroyed in a few minutes.
This school, built on 10 acres (4 hectares), became a pile of debris and corpses. The sky was filled with black smoke. People came running after hearing the sound of the explosion. Police, doctors and rescue teams jointly conducted rescue operations. A few seconds before the explosion, the school bus driver Loni Barber had taken out the children of the primary school, whose life survived luck. Barber left the children at their home after traveling for 2 hours and then returned to school in search of all four children. His son Arden died in the accident. Most of the dead were children from classes 5 to 11, as small students were taught in separate buildings. The deceased were buried in the pleasant hill cemetery near New London.
The cause of the accident revealed the investigation
The construction of the New London school cost a million dollars and was one of the richest schools in the country, which was made with crude oil money, but the accident in such a big school shook the entire country. On the government’s order, the United States Mining Bureau investigated the accident, concluded that the school had deficiencies in the gas line connection. The leakage of gas in the school was caused by the wrong connection, as the natural gas is invisible and odorless, so the leakage could not be detected. It is believed that the spark emanating from the Sander’s switch caught fire.
