At around 12:05pm on the 11th of July, 1978, a fully-loaded tanker truck
left a state-owned refinery in a small town in the autonomous Catalonian region of Spain.
It set off on a routine trip to Puertollano, an industrial city approximately six hours away
by road. The truck never reached its destination. Before it was even halfway
there it would become the cause of an accident which would claim more than 200 innocent lives.
The truck was owned and operated by Cisternas Reunidas,
a company which specialized in the transport of hazardous chemicals and other merchandise.
The chemical being transported on the day of the disaster was indeed a hazardous one: liquefied
propylene. Propylene of this type is used in the manufacture of a huge range of products,
everything from photographic film to food containers.
In its raw form, however, it is an intensely volatile flammable material.
Propylene is normally a gas, but is stored under pressure as a liquid for processing and transport.
Reports concerning how the incident began vary hugely. The truck, fully loaded with
liquid propylene, was passing through the region of Alcanar on a relatively small road
when something went wrong. Some witnesses state that the truck swerved and crashed while others
report it sprang a leak, prompting the driver to stop and try to fix the problem. Whether the truck
stopped or crashed is unknown, but what is certain is that the main body of the container ruptured.
Propylene began to leak from the stationary tanker, instantly becoming a gas. This gas formed
a dense white cloud which, assisted by the breeze, drifted over the nearby Los Alfaques campsite.
The site was packed with around 1,000 holidaymakers at the time.
The cloud had expanded to cover such a distance that few people present on the campsite could
see the stranded truck or judge the source of the strange cloud. Unaware of its origin,
some even approached it out of curiosity, perhaps considering it a freak weather phenomenon.
While the cloud enveloped the campsite tendrils of gaseous propylene had also drifted up the road
all the way to a nearby discotheque. There the gas encountered a spark, or other source of ignition.
Flames erupted, flashing back through the cloud all the way to the tanker which exploded with
colossal force. The cloud of gas enveloping the campsite became, in mere moments, a fireball.
Everything within 90 meters (or 300 feet) of the truck was destroyed by the blast.
Cars were melted, buildings leveled, and people killed outright. Everything within 300 meters
(or 980 feet) was ravaged by fire. This included almost the entire campsite.
Victims were seen with their hair and clothes ablaze, fleeing into the sea in an attempt to
put out the flames. Some witnesses report that the sea itself boiled in the heat from the explosion.
The heat and flames also caused several secondary explosions.
34 vehicles were gutted, in total, with some exploding and causing further injury.
Cylinders of cooking gas used by campers became deadly explosives.
In the immediate aftermath a rescue effort began.
Locals loaded the injured into cars and vans and drove them at full speed to nearby hospitals.
Firefighters and ambulance personnel arrived and began the impossible task of triaging
hundreds of severely injured people.
In total 140 people with severe burns were transported to one of two local hospitals
over the course of three long hours.
On the 11th of July 1978 the disaster claimed the lives of 217 people,
although many more died of their injuries in the weeks and months which followed.
The final toll was around 270 dead and 300 injured.
The task of identifying all of the victims was a gargantuan one,
complicated still further by the fact that many of the dead were wearing only swimsuits,
with no forms of identification to be found about their person.
The building within the campsite where records were kept had also been completely destroyed.
While all of the victims of the disaster were eventually identified, in many cases
by dental records, it sometimes took years before remains were returned to their country of origin.
An investigation revealed multiple failures in safety protocol which contributed to the disaster.
The tanker, it was noted, had been overfilled - something that was routine practice at the
Enpetrol refinery. The facility had no measuring device to determine how full a tanker was,
nor an automatic shutoff to prevent overfilling. In the months before
the disaster many tankers leaving the facility had been dangerously overloaded.
Additionally the tanker had no emergency pressure relief valves. Previously this would have
precluded it from carrying flammable materials, but regulations had recently been loosened in
this regard and pressure release valves were no longer mandatory at the time of the disaster.
The lack of pressure release valves was compounded by weaknesses in the hull of the tank.
Close examination revealed that it had previously been used to transport corrosive substances
which had greatly weakened the structural integrity of the walls of the tank.
While an undamaged container with pressure release valves might still have exploded eventually,
it would likely have remained intact long enough for the immediate area around it to be evacuated.
Cisternas Reunidas accepted responsibility for the disaster and shouldered the blame
for all these oversights, but there was one point where there was some dispute.
Drivers reported that they had routinely been instructed to avoid using the motorway
in favor of smaller roads that passed through densely populated areas. The reason? To avoid
the company having to reimburse them for a motorway toll. Cisternas Reunidas insisted
that the route taken was entirely down to the drivers and no official conclusion was reached.
Ultimately four employees of Cisternas Reunidas were given jail sentences for gross negligence.
These were relatively short terms and in all cases were quashed within a year.
Compensation amounting to around 13 million Euros (15.8 million Dollars) was paid to
the victims - enough to settle all civil suits against the company.
Over the months and years that followed the tragedy many changes were made to regulations
surrounding the transport of dangerous goods - most notably it was forbidden for dangerous
goods to be transported through populated areas when an alternate route was available.
The Los Alfaques campsite was rebuilt.
The owner notes that she is still traumatized by the events of the 11th of July 1978,
but that there is no better comfort to her than welcoming holidaymakers to the campsite -
including several families who survived the disaster and have chosen to return year on year.
While the site is forever haunted by the specter of the explosion, the landscape will recover,
and better memories than those of that dark day will be made there for many years to come.