Refinery disaster in San Juanico in 1984

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The San Juanico refinery disaster is a series of gas explosions that occurred in Mexico on November 19, 1984 . The cause was a gas pipe that had become leaky. At least 500 people were killed in the accident. San Juanico is the slang term for the town of San Juan Ixhuatepec north of Mexico City .

course

A plant belonging to the petroleum company Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) was affected . There a defective safety valve led uncontrolled natural gas into a 20 centimeter thick gas pipe. Eyewitnesses had noticed a gas smell days earlier. On November 19, the pipe could no longer withstand the immensely increased pressure and burst at 5:30 a.m. Extremely flammable gas spread around the facility and the workers' huts erected there. The resulting gas cloud spread in the direction of the company's gas flare . Upon reaching the burning torch, the gas cloud ignited. The fire caused further explosions in the surrounding liquid gas tanks (see BLEVE ).

At 5.46 a.m., one of six main tanks with a capacity of 2,400 cubic meters of liquid gas burst . "[B] within seconds [were] four entire apartment blocks in flames. The seismograph of the Universidad de México , 20 kilometers away, recorded an earthquake measuring five on the Richter scale ”.

The last explosion occurred at around 11 a.m. A total of 11,000 cubic meters of gas were burned. The official number of dead was set at around 500, but only a few could be identified. Presumably many more people died in the slums . Around 7,000 people were injured. 150 houses were completely destroyed, 1400 more damaged. After the disaster, the PEMEX plant was rebuilt. The government had a protection zone of 100 meters built around the refinery, in which no more residential houses could be built in the future.

Another disaster occurred in the village on November 11, 1996, when a leak of oil exploded. Four people died and 15 were injured. In 2006 the facility was closed. The 1992 Guadalajara disaster is one of the major petrochemical disasters in Mexico .

Web links

Commons : Pemex  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ La explosión de gas de San Juanico. (No longer available online.) In: proteccioncivil-andalucia.org. Archived from the original on April 6, 2008 ; Retrieved November 22, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.proteccioncivil-andalucia.org
  2. ↑ Mexico: Practically erased . In: Der Spiegel . No.  48 , 1984 ( online ).
  3. ↑ a b c Catastrophe in Mexico: Hell of flames on earth. In: one day . Spiegel Online, accessed November 22, 2011 .

Coordinates: 19 ° 31 ′ 7.6 ″  N , 99 ° 6 ′ 19.7 ″  W.