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The Grover shoe factory disaster was an industrial accident that killed 58 and injured 150 when it leveled the R. B. Grover shoe factory in Brockton, Massachusetts on March 20, 1905. Following a boiler explosion, the four-story wooden building collapsed and the ruins burst into flames, incinerating those trapped in the wreckage.

As the use of steam power grew during the Industrial Revolution, steam boiler explosions became regular events. Between 1880 and 1890 there were over 2,000 in the United States. The Grover calamity brought a new focus on industrial safety, and led to stringent safety laws and a national code governing boiler capacity and safe operation.

Contents 1 Factory and boiler 2 Explosion, collapse, fire 3 Escape, rescue, or death 4 Identifying the victims 5 Suspected causes 6 Survivor aid 7 Bankrupt but blameless 8 Engineering study 9 ?goes in next section? 10 Safety legacy //(& ASME) 11 See also 12 References

[edit] Factory and boiler

The R. B. Grover shoe factory was large, but not the largest in Brockton, a town with 35,000 shoe workers. The wooden building, shaped like a tall letter E, occupied half a city block.^[1] Grover produced the popular Emerson shoe,^[2] and business was good enough to add a fourth floor.

The factory was heated using steam radiators, with the steam being produced by coal-fired steel boilers installed in a brick boiler house attached to the wooden factory as the crossbar of the E. When the fourth floor was added, the original boiler was replaced by a larger one. The old boiler, 17 feet long and six feet in diameter, was left in place as a backup. Since the new boiler could generally meet the factory's demands on its own, the old one was seldom used; when used, it was used reluctantly. Grover's chief engineer David W. Rockwell, who had a first-class engineer's license and twelve years experience, did not trust it.^[3]

The new boiler needed to be flushed out as part of its regular maintenance. To do that, Rockwell needed to put the old boiler back into service. Early that Monday he reconnected the old boiler, lit its coal fire, and put it to work heating the building for arriving day-shift workers. At 7:45 a.m. the plant manager telephoned Rockwell to ask about some strange noises coming from the radiators along one wall. Rockwell had just stepped out of the building, but his assistant assured the manager that everything was in order.

A few minutes later, the old boiler exploded with a roar and shot through the roof.^[4]

[edit] Explosion, collapse, fire

The flying boiler went through three floors and the roof, knocking over a water tower. The falling water tower caved in the roof at one end of the building, causing that end to immediately collapse, with its walls and floors falling in on each other.^[5][4]

The collapse trapped many workers in the wreckage. Burning coals scattered by the explosion landed on the wreckage, starting fires that were soon fed by broken gas lines.

intial explosion killing workers on its way

Workers who survived the explosion were trapped by fallen // xx and yy // and fires touched off by burning coals flying from the boiler's fire pit and fed by broken gas lines.

The factory's more than 300 windows, now broken, created a chimney effect in the part of the factory that had not collapsed immediately, causing the fire to be hot enough to melt iron pipes and radiators.

• several explosions of naphtha

Workers trapped by broken //beams//timbers, wrecked wooden floors and heavy machinery

The wooden floors, treated nightly with linseed oil to keep the dust down, //burned quickly//.

• cremated
• weighted with heavy machines
• floor sank beneath them
• burned to death
• unable to extricate themselves
• no chance of identification
• trapped and pinned to the floor [could do nothing but await death]

High winds spread the fire to seven nearby buildings //including a hardware store and a rooming house// The number of workers in the factory at the time of the explosion was estimated as between 300 and 400.

Rockwell owned a house immediately behind the boiler room. The flying boiler demolished the house, ripping off the roof and two walls, and narrowly missed his wife. It came to rest halfway through another house, knocking it off its foundation.

Engineers later estimated the explosion's force as the equivalent of 300 kilos (660 pounds) of dynamite, leaving the split boiler over 150 feet (46 meters) away from the boiler room.

[edit] Escape, rescue, or death

Workers in the factory sections still standing escaped by the inside stairways or climbed to the roof; others went to the windows but had to jump because the explosion had torn some of the fire escapes off the building.

The Campello district firehouse shared the block with the shoe factory; its firemen arrived quickly, as did citizens from the immediate area. Using long timbers as levers, they were able to lift some of the wreckage and pull out some trapped workers before the flames reached them. crawl though the debris Those still trapped watched others burn to death before them. Rescuers were soon driven back by sheets of burning industrial solvents thrown skyward by explosions in storage sheds outside the factory.

and made some heroic rescues but were driven away as the fire //quickly //worsened////. //many //selfless// acts of bravery//heroism

About 100 workers escaped unharmed. A number who were only slightly injured went home without reporting their injuries. Police related the story of a worker so dazed that he left the scene, applied for a job at another shoe factory, worked all day, then went home to find his family mourning him.^[6]

[edit] Identifying the victims

In the afternoon the search for bodies began//, collecting charred bodies, and only bone fragments in the area where the fire was worst, toward the rear of the factory. families arrived looking for missing workers and the survivors were asked to to register their names with the police; grief-stricken relatives ran back and forth between //checking the latest// lists and watching the efforts to recover bodies

An immediate search was made for Rockwell. He was at first reported as among the injured, then could not be found, then at one point was reported as having left town. From her kitchen window, Mrs. Rockwell had seen him sitting in a chair near the window of the boiler room five minutes before the explosion. A search of the boiler room the next day turned up a charred body. With it were a bent watch, two rubber heels and a torn piece of clothing identified by Mrs. Rockwell as belonging to her husband.^[6][4]

Due to the ferocity of the fire, only a few bodies could be positively identified. Three days later, thirty-nine coffins of unidentified remains were laid to rest in Brockton's Melrose Cemetery.^[7]

Hiram Pierce, the 58th victim//to die// of the disaster, died in the hospital on April 15.

[edit] Suspected causes

An assistant engineer who had been with Rockwell five minutes before the explosion stated that when he left, the boiler gauges showed steam pressure to be in the safe range and the boiler to have plenty of water.^[6] The State Inspector of Boilers checked the boiler's fusible plug and determined that the explosion was not caused by a lack of water in the boiler.^[5]

Rockwell's wife stated that for the past few days her husband had been irritable because he had to operate the boiler at "a pressure it was unequal to". A factory official stated that he was "at a loss" to account for the explosion, and when told of Mrs. Rockwell's remarks said that the amount of pressure on the boiler was not a matter in which factory officials interfered, adding that the engineer "took his orders in this matter from the Hartford Boiler Insurance Company, and if he overworked that boiler he did it without our knowledge. We do not even know why he used the old boiler this week instead of the newer one".^[5]

(The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company provided regular inspection and testing to customers of its insurance program, as well as on-site engineering services,^[8] resulting in something of a shared responsibility with boiler owners for safe operation.)

The Grover company's corporate secretary speculated that the explosion might have been caused by a recently installed safety device.^[5]

C. E. Roberts, a manager of Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance, stated "So far as I have been able to learn there appears to have been no carelessness in the handling of the boiler, and the explosion, in my opinion, was caused by a defect that was impossible to discover."^[5]

[edit] Survivor aid

On the day of the fire, the leatherworkers union announced that the injured would be paid $5 weekly until they recovered, and that the families of the dead would receive $100 for each family member killed.^[5] Civic leaders created the Brockton Relief Fund, which collected and distributed nearly $105,000 in cash assistance to the families. Captain Grover worked for the rest of his life to secure financial aid for the families of those who died.^[3]

[edit] Bankrupt but blameless

Although the factory was insured, Captain Grover was financially ruined. On April 10, the R. B. Grover Company declared bankruptcy and assigned its remaining assets, a chain of more than 30 Emerson shoe stores scattered around the country, to its creditors. On April 13, following a coroner's inquest into the death of one of the victims a judge found that the explosion was caused by a defect that could not have been discovered, and held the company blameless. He also found that the various insinuations made against Rockwell were untrue.<engstudy>

[edit] Engineering study

In an April 1905 engineering study of the disaster, many facts were brought to light.^[4]

At least two barrels (84 gallons) of naphtha, a volatile industrial solvent akin to gasoline, were stored in a wooden shed directly behind the boiler room. The shed was set afire by burning coals from the explosion and the naptha exploded, throwing sheets of burning naptha onto the factory wreckage. The study believes that without the naptha explosion the number of deaths would have been only about one-quarter the actual. The naphtha explosion crushed one side of the factory building, pinning more workers under beams and machinery. Another outbuilding containing naphtha caught fire after about fifteen minutes and there was a second naphtha explosion, showering hundreds of gallons of the flaming liquid on the burning wreckage.

<?at the inquest?> expert opinion //painted// the riveted lapped-seam steel boiler, built in 1890, as old technology likely to have a short service life under high pressure. Thousands of similar boilers were in use in the United States alone.

built in 1890 , //tearing itself open// along its riveted lap jointed seams,

was inspected could not be seen

[edit] ?goes in next section?

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) was founded in 1880 in response to the rash of boiler explosions that were a regular by-product of the use of steam power during the {Industrial Revolution]]. Between 1880 and 1890 there were over 2,000 boiler explosions in the United States.^[9] this one 1906 one 'unsafe boilers' 'the boiler code' boiler regulation "Since consistent operating guidelines and inspections for steam pressure systems were virtually nonexistent in this period of frenetic industrial activity and commercialism, many boilers in use were unsafe."<asme> "and in the absence of consistent operating guidelines many users cranked up the pressure ratings in an effort to produce additional work."<asme> "Six months following the incident in 1906, ASME assembled a five-person Board of Boiler Rules, which drafted a brief document that was endorsed by the Massachusetts legislature. The rules specified pressure limits on boilers (cast-iron systems were limited to 25 psi) and included guidelines for the performance characteristics of plugs and rivets."<asme>

[edit] Safety legacy //(& ASME)

"In the months following the Grover disaster, Massachusetts would create the most stringent laws governing boilers and their capacity in the country. The Massachusetts Boiler Code would later be used as the national model."

"one of the primary reasons why boiler safety standards were implemented, first in Massachusetts, and later in other states and nationwide."

///things improved but However,// the Brockton boiler tragedy would not be the last; 23 people were killed and 94 injured in 1962 when a boiler exploded and ripped through a New York Telephone Company cafeteria at lunchtime. A city agency later determined that the boiler had been improperly maintained and operated.^[10]

• Times search: http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?query=brockton+boiler&d=&o=&v=&c=&n=10&dp=0&daterange=period&srcht=a&year1=1905&mon1=03&day1=21&year2=1980&mon2=12&day2=31&srchst=p&sort=oldest

• Google: http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&q=factory+explosion+brockton+march+1905&btnG=Search

[edit] See also

• Sultana steamboat explosion
• Boiler explosion
• Boiler insurance
• Fire-tube boiler

[edit] References

^[1]

^[2]

^[3]