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Cleveland East Ohio Gas Company Fire

The Cleveland East Ohio Gas Company fire of October 20, 1944 started when a tank of liquid natural gas (LNG) at the Company’s Liquefaction, Storage, and Regasification (L, S, and R) plant ruptured spilling thousands of gallons of LNG over the plant and nearby residential neighborhood. The result was a major fire which killed 130 people and destroyed over one-half square mile of the city’s east side between East 55th Street and East 61st Street, several blocks south of Lake Erie. Some damage extended beyond the destroyed area.

The Background

The L, S, and R plant was built in 1940 to provide nearby storage for natural gas. During cold snaps, gas received via pipeline was insufficient to allow all users to be supplied; some users (industrial) had to be cut-off during these cold snaps. It is impractical to store natural gas as a gas because of the large volumes required. However, if it is liquefied it can be stored in a volume 600 times smaller. The L, S, and R plant was built to do this. However, the LNG must be kept at a temperature of -260°F. Thus the tanks were built like Thermos bottles with an internal tank holding the cold LNG separated from the surrounding external structural tank by three feet of insulation. Each tank was about 63 feet in diameter. The 1940 plant was built with three spherical tanks holding the equivalent of 50 million cubic feet of gas each; about 600,000 gallons of liquid each. The plant worked well. Gas was collected in off-peak hours, liquefied, and stored to be regasified for peak loads. In 1942 a fourth tank, a cylinder, was built with a capacity of 100 million cubic feet of gas. The plant was built adjacent to a residential area in the heart of the city. All the energy was necessary to supply the war industry in Cleveland. This was the first liquid natural gas plant in the world; the start of an industry.

The Disaster

At about 2:30 p.m. on that Friday the inner tank of the cylinder (tank 4) ruptured causing the liquid gas to fill the outer tank which in turn ruptured spilling LNG throughout the plant and neighborhood. The white vapor observed by many was the interaction of the cold gas with water vapor in the air. Some of the gas boiled off immediately and caught fire, reaching temperatures between 2000°F and 3000°F. The liquid natural gas flowed down the streets into the sewer system and into houses, causing many of them to explode and others to disintegrate in the fire. The liquid flowed in the sewers well past the immediate area of destruction causing manhole covers to explode miles away. On one nearby street an explosion collapsed a street under a pumping fire truck. The truck continued to pump water onto the fires from its position in the crater. Thirty four pumpers and a coast Guard fire boat pumped over seven million gallons of water onto the fire. The liquid moved many pieces of the failed tank hundreds of yards away from the origin.

There were numerous small explosions but no major ones. By various reports, anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour after the initial rupture, spherical tank 3 failed because of its proximity to tank 4. Surprisingly, tanks 1 and 2 survived the catastrophe. The causality count bounced around for days until the coroner determined there were 130 fatalities. Twenty one of these remained unidentified and were buried in a common grave in a nearby cemetery. Because of the intensity of the flames the remains were sometimes just small scraps of bone which could not be identified. Almost 100 homes were destroyed as were hundreds of automobiles. Tires exploded and birds were fried in flight. Most of the causalities were working at the East Ohio plant. Many of the neighborhood resident casualties were women at home preparing for the weekend. The children were not yet home from school. Had the incident happened in the evening the residential casualties would have been higher, but the East Ohio employee casualties would have been lower.

Another side effect, besides the loss of life, was the loss of money of some survivors. This was an immigrant community, mostly Slovenes, who were trying to save their money. Only about a dozen years before many had lost their savings when many banks failed. Many were now saving their money at home. This money turned to ash during the intense fire.

After the fire East Ohio quickly regasified the LNG in the two remaining tanks, putting it into the gas mains. They dismantled the plant; their experiment with LNG was over. The residential area was rebuilt with the help of local businessmen and remains a neat neighborhood today.

Investigation

Two investigating teams, one set up by the Mayor and one by the U.S. Bureau of Mines, took several months to determine a cause for the accident. Their main conclusions were that the material used for the inner tanks, which were at -260°F, was probably not appropriate, and the design of tank 4 was also inappropriate. Steel is very brittle at low temperatures, fracturing with a light impact. It can be made less brittle by the addition of nickel. The builders knew this, although they did not do extensive research on the material. They used steel with 3½ percent nickel, one that was available. Later, in the mid-1940s, extensive peer-reviewed research did show that this material was marginal for that low temperature use. The material in the three spheres, however, was good enough; it did not fail. The 3½ percent nickel-steel used in tank 4, however, was a bad batch of a marginal material; it was not strong enough in impact strength–the property needed for strength at low temperatures. The tank 4 material failed causing the rupture.

The unusual tank design contributed to the failure. Because insulation was needed all around the cylinder, the bottom was raised off the ground on wooden posts to allow for insulation underneath. This design made it susceptible to shock loads. Although not conclusive, it is possible that a series of minor shocks on the tank over time caused the brittle inner tank of tank 4 to experience a brittle fatigue fracture which led to the rupture.

Also, strikingly obvious after the accident, was that the plant should never have been placed in a city near a residential area. One tank was only 100 feet from a home. The plant contained the equivalent of 250 million cubic feet of natural gas; about 250 billion BTU.

Recovery

The fire stopped progress in liquid natural gas for several years. It revived in the mid-1950s when one person wanted to liquefy natural gas on the Gulf coast and barge it up to Chicago. Although this did not work out the idea of shipping LNG to places that had no gas was attractive to British interests. An old U.S. Liberty ship was converted to carry LNG, and in 1959 successfully delivered a load of LNG to an island near London. Natural gas was discovered in Algeria, and soon there was a booming business in shipping LNG over the world. In the U.S. interest was revived and throughout the 1960s and 1970s over 40 new plants were constructed for domestic use. Most of these were much larger than the original Cleveland plant. The U.S. LNG industry now operates by liquefying, storing, and then regasifying natural gas to supply both peak-loads and in some places, base-loads. Anticipating the need for more energy, import terminals were also constructed on the East Coast.

Research on materials over the years subsequent to the accident determined that a safe material for these types of cryogenic tanks is nine percent nickel-steel. This is now the standard used for these tanks. New insulation materials, including perlite, have made it possible to use more optimally designed storage tanks unlike the poor design used for tank 4 in Cleveland. New codes for storing LNG have also since been written and regulate the construction of these facilities.

The U.S. is presently in a natural gas boom, primarily because of new ways of extracting natural gas, including hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.” If this continues the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that the U.S. will become a natural gas exporter, via LNG, in a few years.

The disaster plays a major role in Don Robertson's 1965 coming-of-age novel "the Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread."

References

1. Hrastar, John (2014). Liquid Natural Gas in the United States: A History (First ed.). Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7864-7859-0.