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The Tragedy in Mexico City

The Tragedy in Mexico City in 1984 was of dramatic proportions with over 500 people killed, 7,000 injured and 200,000 evacuated. The incident happened at a large LPG storage and distribution site in the San Juanico district where crowded, primitive housing had spread to within 130 meters of the plant over the years since its construction. In the morning of the 19 of November a large leakage of LPG occurred causing an extensive fire and a series of violent explosions that almost completely destroyed the storage facility: two of these explosions were extremely violent BLEVEs, registering 0.5 on the Richter scale. Blast waves, internal explosions within houses, heat radiation and engulfment by fireballs caused extensive casualties and damage. Masses of vessel and pipe fragments were blown into the air by the explosions and descended as "metal rain". Fireballs with diameters of 200-300 meters were recorded, these being the major cause of death within 300 meters of the storage plant.

The direct cause of the original leak is unknown, but investigators concluded that the most likely cause was the overfilling and overpressuring of a cylinder or pipeline. The incident was undoubtedly escalated by the layout of the storage site, with spheres and cylinders closely packed together. Fragments from the exploding vessels initiated other vessel explosions and ruptures and so on. The crowded housing located so near to the site obviously caused most of the casualties, many of the dead being killed as they slept.

UNIT 5

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