1974: The Flixborough disaster

The Flixborough disaster was an explosion at a chemical plant close to the village of Flixborough, North Lincolnshire, England on Saturday, 1 June 1974. It killed 28 people and seriously injured 36 out of a total of 72 people on site at the time. The casualty figures could have been much higher, if the explosion had occurred on a weekday, when the main office area would have been occupied. 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. There was no on-site senior manager with mechanical engineering expertise (virtually all the plant management had chemical engineering qualifications); mechanical engineering issues with the modification were overlooked by the managers who approved it, nor was the severity of the potential consequences of its failure appreciated.