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The texas city disaster a painful way to learn
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Texas City Disaster: a Painful Way to Learn
In the bright, clear, spring morning of April 16, 1947, an event occurred in the Texas City Harbor in Texas City. To the survivors of this disaster, what happened on that Sunday morning was like the end of the world. Sadly, to those who did not make it, this indeed became the end of their world. This event that brings unforgettable painful memories from 50 years ago is referred to as the Texas City disaster.
It all began with the French cargo ship, S.S. Grandcamp, a 437-foot ship that arrived at Texas City Harbor on April 11, 1947. Upon arrival, the Grandcamp was already loaded with 16 cases of small arms ammunition, 59000 bales of sisal binder twine, 380 bales of cotton, 9334 bags of shelled peanuts and some oil field, refrigeration and farm machinery. Over the next few days, bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, shipped from Nebraska via rail by TCT (Texas City Terminal Railway company) were being loaded onto the ship. By the morning of April 16, 1947, No. 2 hold had 1420 tons of ammonium nitrate while No. 4 had 880 tons.
At 8 am that morning, a longshoreman smelled smoke coming out of hold No. 4. He alertly notified his co-workers and they moved several bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and found flames between the cargo and the hull. They tried putting out the fire with a jug of drinking water and fire extinguisher but their effort ended in vain while the flame got worse. Some crewmembers started hauling boxes of arm ammunition out of hold No. 5 (to avoid explosion!) In hold No. 4, some crewmembers called for a hose line to distinguish the fire but the ship captain, Charles de Guillebon, interfered because he did not want water to ruin his precious cargo. Instead, he or...
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...gineer in the chemical plant is not like to be committed again.
50 years and 6 months after the Texas City disaster, a lot of changes has been made to ensure the safety of handling hazardous material due to the disaster. It was a wake up call for people around the world to look deeply into the safety issues and for government to assume an active role in enforcing those issues. For the residents in Texas City who decided to stay and rebuild after the disaster, it was more than a wake up call for safety. It was a painful memory that made people even stronger. It was a call for the community to come together and make Texas city a major industrial center again. It was a joint effort to make Texas City a better and safer place to live.
However, watch out! No place is safe enough and Texas City disaster can very well strike again somewhere around the world today!
Hurricane Katrina was the most expensive hurricane that hit the United States ever. The hurricane was the third strongest of the season, behind both Hurricane Wilma and Rita. The hurricane was the third strongest of the season, behind both Hurricane Wilma and Rita.
Stickrath, Thomas J., and Gregory A. Bucholtz. "Supermaximum Security Prisons Are Necessary." Supermax Prisons: Beyond the Rock. Lanham, MD: American Correctional Facility, 2003. Rpt. in America's Prisons. Ed. Clare Hanrahan. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2006. Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.
...Mental Health Issues in Long-Term Solitary and "Supermax" Confinement. Crime and Delinquency, 49(124), 124-154. doi:10.1177/0011128702239239
The United States’ justice system is facing a nationwide epidemic with the usage of solitary confinement. The state of New York is beginning to take steps to completely remove the practice from its correctional facilities. Public opinion of the banning is divided. Many see the use of solitary as a necessary evil to aid the rehabilitation of prisoners and to separate violent and nonviolent inmates. These individuals, along with prison guards, fear that the banning of the isolation unit will cause violence amongst the general population to increase. Other states such as Maine and Mississippi have significantly reduced the usage of solitary confinement without an increase in prisoner violence. This has led many people to question the effectiveness
6:10 am August 29th 2005. Similar to December 7th 1941 and September 11th 2001, this is a day that will be remembered as a day of fear and uncertainty and a horrific aftermath. August 29th is the day that Hurricane Katrina made its second and most deadly landfall on the Southern United States. Released on September 5th 2005 an estimated 11.9 million Americans were affected by Katrina between Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama (U.S. Census Bureau). With only a few days to gather all that they could, thousands if not hundreds of thousands Americans had to evacuate their homes and leave the life they knew. Sadly for all of the ones that could not pick up and leave had to ride out the deadly power of Katrina and hope of emergency aid. With some areas flooded to almost 25 feet of water there was many health ( sewage and waste flooding streets, no food, no water, etc) and public safety issues( high floods, collapsing homes, etc) that would have to be handled immediately for those that were needing rescued and for everyone to come home and rebuild. Right away there were several public emergency groups dispatched to help with the aid and recovery. Once the government got involved more appeared. Being that it is almost the 5 year anniversary of Katrina the question is how effective were these efforts?
Hazards pose risk to everyone. Our acceptance of the risks associated with hazards dictates where and how we live. As humans, we accept a certain amount of risk when choosing to live our daily lives. From time to time, a hazard becomes an emergent situation. Tornadoes in the Midwest, hurricanes along the Gulf Coast or earthquakes in California are all hazards that residents in those regions accept and live with. This paper will examine one hazard that caused a disaster requiring a response from emergency management personnel. Specifically, the hazard more closely examined here is an earthquake. With the recent twenty year anniversary covered by many media outlets, the January 17, 1994, Northridge, California earthquake to date is the most expensive earthquake in American history.
Solitary confinement is occasionally used in most prison systems as a means to maintain prison order: as disciplinary punishment or as an administrative measure for inmates who are considered an escape risk or a risk to themselves or to prison order in general. Some inmates, for example, sex offenders, choose voluntary isolation to avoid harassment from other prisoners. Solitary confinement is popular in America. Solitary confinement is dangerous in its own right. It deprives prisoners of their constitutional rights, and it creates a more dangerous world for all. Supermax prisons remain a major part of the problem, and given that they have shown no ability to hold prisoners without subjecting those prisoners to unconstitutional and unethical
Super maximum prisons are made for “super criminals” that has to be cut off from the rest of the world. To name a few criminals that has been removed from the world is the “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski and the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Some of these criminals in super max prisons are usually have long sentences or death sentences. On any given day, there are about 80,000 inmates that resides in Supermax institutions in the United States. In the 1980s there was a critical upping in prison violence, riots, and staff murdered by prisoners housed in supermax prisons. The government prison in Marion, Illinois, considered by numerous to be the main supermax prisons, experienced huge prisoner violence, which brought about the death of two prison guards in 1983. Originally, they were not 23 hours lock down prisons until the actions that took place during
The prison system has shaped the modern world and helped to create the society we have today. We feel safer and, especially in the United States, we are freer and can keep our sense of freedom because we feel safe enough to do what we want. The prisons systems have set up their own methods of keeping the small world of the prison in control. They have created their own rules, and regulations to keep the system running smoothly. “Further, the National Prison Association (NPA)—forerunner of the American Correctional Association (ACA)—already had been in existence for three decades, providing a valuable professional forum for prison officials to meet, share ideas and advocate solutions” (Herman 50). It is essential that these systems keep constant control of the situation inside the prisons. The control that they put over the prisons not only needs to be maintained, but ne...
The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was one of the largest disasters in American history. Practically overnight the great city of Chicago was destroyed. Before the fire there was a large drought causing everything to be dry and flammable, then a fire broke out in the O’Leary’s barn and spread throughout the city. Many attempts were made to put out the fire but there were too many errors and problems in the beginning. After the fire many people were left homeless and had to help build their city again (Murphy, 39)
Many of these unfortunate symptoms are especially worrisome for mentally ill inmates. Because the prevalence of mental illness in supermax facilities is not known, the effects of solitary confinement on the mentally ill must be gleaned from multiple sources. The state of our knowledge is more than sufficient to cause distress, however. According to one researcher: Solitary confinement cells are grossly inappropriate for the mentally ill. . . These cells are constructed to minimize sensory input of any kind to the inmate. They provide the type of atmosphere that produces sensory deprivation stress or psychotic reactions, particularly in inmates who are borderline or overtly psychotic. The empirical evidence supports this contention, as well as the conclusion that solitary confinement may have deleterious effects on non- mentally ill inmates.” (Law and Psychology Review pgs. 213-214) Inmate mental health is a complex issue. Most correctional facilities lack the onsite staff needed to provide continuous mental health treatment. This critical personnel shortfall is an ongoing
It hasn’t been fact whether it does effect the confined prisoners to have very limited human reaction or not. But the long term effects are theorized to have a stronger consequence and impact on the mental health. It also comes to question if it would effect a mentally-ill inmate more. Little to no study has been done to conclude that fact as of yet. It has been found that since the establishment of such facilities, the assaults from inmates to staff have reduced greatly. David Mere (2002) concluded “few studies document the extent to which the criteria states articulate for the placement and release of prisoners are followed. Even less is known about how long inmates stay on average in a supermax and how long they then are in traditional prisons before release to society. How many are released from a supermax straight into communities? What is the behavior of released supermax inmates upon reentry into other prisons or into society? What are the characteristics (e.g., age, sex, race/ethnicity, prior record and length-of-stay, behavior that led to supermax confinement) of inmates placed in supermax facilities and have these characteristics changed over time?” (p. 50-51). Mere has the correct input, it is near impossible to study these types of behaviors because of the boundaries of the situation. It is hard to say how long an inmate in a supermax prison is placed in there for, and many of the inmates
Every year, many natural disasters happen around the world. In New Orleans, and several other states, a devastating hurricane struck. High-speed winds and major flooding caused many people to lose their homes and even their lives. Many people have heard of Hurricane Katrina, but not everybody knows what caused it and the affect it had on the United States. On the early morning of August 29th, 2005 on the Gulf Shore near New Orleans, a devastating hurricane struck.
America locks up five times more of its' population than any other nation in the world. Due to prison overcrowding, prisoners are currently sleeping on floors, in tents, in converted broom closets and gymnasiums, or even in double or triple bunks in cells, which were designed for one inmate. Why is this happening? The U.S. Judicial System has become so succumbed to the ideal that Imprisonment is the most visibly form of punishment. The current structure of this system is failing terribly. To take people, strip them of their possessions and privacy, expose them to violence on a daily basis, restrict their quality of life to a 5x7ft cell, and deprive them of any meaning to live. This scenario is a standard form of punishment for violent offenders, although not suitable for nonviolent offenders.
intensity and devastated several parts of the United States, with particular damage to the city of