# Flixborough: The Factory that was Wiped off the Map

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 12 Dec 2025, 39 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/da23167a-d26e-4bdc-8f8f-b3b000ffc807/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

A megaplant near the small village of Flixborough, England, is busy churning out a key ingredient of nylon 6, a material used in everything from stockings to toothbrushes to electronics. When a reactor vessel fails, the engineers improvise a quick-fix workaround, so the plant can keep up with demand. Before long, the temporary patch - a small, bent pipe - becomes a permanent part of the factory, and the people of Flixborough unknowingly drift towards disaster. For a full list of sources, see www.timharford.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. In the episode You're About to Hear, I mentioned
[0:21] Speaker 1: the new podcast Business History, and I thought you might
[0:24] Speaker 1: want to hear a bit more about it. Business History
[0:27] Speaker 1: is hosted by two podcasting legends, Robert Smith and Jacob Goldstein.
[0:32] Speaker 1: Robert and Jacob tell the stories behind famous companies and
[0:35] Speaker 1: iconic products, and chart financial booms and bursting bubbles and
[0:40] Speaker 1: as they say in Hollywood. This new show comes from
[0:43] Speaker 1: the producers of Cautionary Tales. Listen to Business History wherever
[0:47] Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or search Business History podcast on
[0:51] Speaker 1: YouTube to see it in video form. Lincolnshire, on the
[0:58] Speaker 1: east coast of England, sparsely populated and largely rural. Few
[1:04] Speaker 1: great moments of history have been made here. Large towns
[1:08] Speaker 1: are also the people tend to live in small villages,
[1:12] Speaker 1: engaged in such bucolic activities as potato farming and pig husbandry.
[1:18] Speaker 1: It seems hard to believe that Lincolnshire is on anyone's radar.
[1:23] Speaker 1: The county is famed for something though, being flat, and
[1:28] Speaker 1: that flatness has given Lincolnshire a geopolitical significance. It's perfect
[1:35] Speaker 1: for air bases. In the early summer of nineteen seventy four,
[1:52] Speaker 1: Lincolnshire is home to v Force of the RAF. The
[1:57] Speaker 1: giant Vulcan bombers screaming up this long runway a part
[2:02] Speaker 1: of Britain's nuclear deterrented. If a Soviet Union launches a
[2:06] Speaker 1: surprise atomic strike, these Royal Air Force crews have just
[2:10] Speaker 1: a few minutes warning to get into the air and
[2:13] Speaker 1: hit back, devastating karl Markstadt, Minsk or Moscow in retaliation.
[2:23] Speaker 1: The Vulcan pilots would doubtless have much on their minds
[2:26] Speaker 1: given the mission ahead, but few wasted time in thinking
[2:30] Speaker 1: of their return home. The quite reasonable assumption is that
[2:34] Speaker 1: the Russians would pulverize Lincolnshire and its runways while they
[2:39] Speaker 1: were away. It's late on a Saturday afternoon and farmer
[2:46] Speaker 1: Gordon Atkinson is working in a sugar beet field near
[2:49] Speaker 1: the hamlet of brandy Wharf, but a distant noise prompts
[2:55] Speaker 1: him to look up from his labors. I heard this
[2:59] Speaker 1: rumble and thought it's going to be a thunderstorm, he said,
[3:05] Speaker 1: But that rolling boom was no act of God. Its
[3:09] Speaker 1: origins were man made. An enormous explosion has just ripped
[3:15] Speaker 1: across northern Lincolnshire, and if that wasn't obvious to Gordon Atkinson.
[3:20] Speaker 1: It was all too clear to his elderly mother. She's
[3:26] Speaker 1: been spending a quiet afternoon at home twenty miles near
[3:30] Speaker 1: at the epicenter of the detonation. Her house was now
[3:35] Speaker 1: as shambles. The blast ripped the front door off its
[3:44] Speaker 1: hinges and sent it rocketing up the staircase to the
[3:47] Speaker 1: floor above. If she could see, Missus Atkinson might have
[3:52] Speaker 1: despaired at the state of her lounge, littered as it
[3:56] Speaker 1: was with shards of glass and tatters of curtaincloth. But
[4:01] Speaker 1: she couldn't see. The blast wave had come whooshing down
[4:05] Speaker 1: the chimney stack, filling the house with a blinding, choking
[4:09] Speaker 1: veil of soot. People ten, twenty, even thirty miles from
[4:15] Speaker 1: the explosion stopped in their tracks to look in the
[4:19] Speaker 1: direction of Missus Atkinson's village. Flicksborough, teenager Leduena Beckers was
[4:29] Speaker 1: watching the football on TV with her four brothers, rushing
[4:33] Speaker 1: to look out the window. The family joked about what
[4:36] Speaker 1: the source of the noise might be. But then we
[4:39] Speaker 1: saw the mushroom cloud, dark and ominous in the sky,
[4:44] Speaker 1: said Ladrena. All laughter in the Beckers household stopped had
[4:51] Speaker 1: World War IREE really begun. I'm Tim Harford and you're
[4:57] Speaker 1: listening to another cautionary tale. You've probably never heard of polycaprolactum,
[5:29] Speaker 1: even by its snappier monica nylon six. But I'll bet
[5:33] Speaker 1: there's some nylon six within arms reach of you right now.
[5:37] Speaker 1: It's used in all manner of items. It makes the
[5:40] Speaker 1: bristles of toothbrushes and the strings of tennis rackets. You
[5:44] Speaker 1: can find it inside almost every electrical gadget, and since
[5:49] Speaker 1: nylon six is used to fashion medical implants, you might
[5:53] Speaker 1: even have some inside you. Nylon six is strong, hard
[5:59] Speaker 1: and tough. It won't conduct electricity and doesn't taint foods
[6:04] Speaker 1: it comes into contact with. It's useful stuff, and it
[6:08] Speaker 1: would be hard to imagine our world without it. Flying
[6:11] Speaker 1: a plane, driving a car, or even getting dressed in
[6:14] Speaker 1: the morning would be a very different proposition without nylon six.
[6:21] Speaker 1: Nylon six was an invention of Nazi Germany. The polymer
[6:25] Speaker 1: was used to make parachute canopies, tires for warplanes, and
[6:29] Speaker 1: the toe ropes of gliders. But nylon six production really
[6:34] Speaker 1: boomed in the post war years, with factories around the
[6:37] Speaker 1: world pumping out the stuff. Depending on where you lived,
[6:41] Speaker 1: it might be marketed as Perlon, Nilotron, ultramid, or Jurathan.
[6:48] Speaker 1: I won't bore you with the details of its manufacture,
[6:51] Speaker 1: but this story centers around the production of caprolactum, from
[6:55] Speaker 1: which nylon six is made. By the nineteen seventies, nylon
[7:00] Speaker 1: six was in huge demand. The fibers were so ubiquitous
[7:04] Speaker 1: that there was even a fashion for people to carpet
[7:06] Speaker 1: their entire homes wall to wall with the stuff. To
[7:10] Speaker 1: meet this clamor, a joint venture was launched by the
[7:13] Speaker 1: Dutch State Mines and the British National Coal Board. There
[7:18] Speaker 1: had been a modest factory at Flicksborough making fertilizer from
[7:22] Speaker 1: the mucky waste from local steel foundries, but now under
[7:27] Speaker 1: the name Nypro, Flicksburg was getting into the glamorous world
[7:32] Speaker 1: of polymers. The plant would be transformed at the cost
[7:37] Speaker 1: of many millions of pounds, and the workforce would swell
[7:41] Speaker 1: into the hundreds. Local newspapers soon filled up with recruitment
[7:46] Speaker 1: ads for chemists, engineers, shorthand typists and canteen staff. It
[7:51] Speaker 1: was expected the complex would use as much power as
[7:54] Speaker 1: a city of half a million people, all to produce
[7:58] Speaker 1: seventy thousand tons of cap prolactum per year. It would
[8:02] Speaker 1: be Britain's biggest, indeed its only caprolactum plant. Nypro was
[8:10] Speaker 1: essentially putting all its eggs in one basket, and to
[8:15] Speaker 1: many this reasoning seemed sound. Building a single mega factory
[8:19] Speaker 1: offered considerable economies of scale. It would simplify transport and logistics,
[8:25] Speaker 1: and allow Nipro to strike bulk buying deals for energy
[8:28] Speaker 1: and raw materials. So in sleepy rural Lincolnshire, on a
[8:34] Speaker 1: curve of the Broad River trend, the Nypro works quickly
[8:39] Speaker 1: took shape. Gargantuan cranes hoisted gleaming steel processing tanks into place.
[8:45] Speaker 1: Chimneys and cooling towers went up, as did tall spindleaf flarestacks.
[8:51] Speaker 1: After dark, their flames, along with countless strings of lights,
[8:56] Speaker 1: picked out the silhouette of the plant against the night sky.
[9:05] Speaker 1: Dennis Lawrence was one of Nipro's employees. He loved the job.
[9:10] Speaker 1: He told his family the plant was just so modern,
[9:14] Speaker 1: so clean, but all was not well at nightprob The
[9:21] Speaker 1: target was to produce seventy thousand tonnes of caprolactum per year,
[9:26] Speaker 1: but by nineteen seventy four. Two years into the expansion,
[9:30] Speaker 1: only forty seven thousand tons were likely to leave the
[9:33] Speaker 1: factory gate. For Nipro to turn a profit, they needed
[9:37] Speaker 1: to make more of the stuff, and quickly. The heart
[9:41] Speaker 1: of the factory was a series of six identical steel
[9:45] Speaker 1: reactor vessels. These cylindrical tanks were installed in a line
[9:49] Speaker 1: and connected by pipework. The first, sixteen foot tall vessel
[9:54] Speaker 1: was the highest in this chain. The second vessel was
[9:57] Speaker 1: placed fourteen inches lower, and so on. Thus gravity would
[10:02] Speaker 1: aid the flow of chemicals from one down to the next,
[10:07] Speaker 1: and the chemical inside was liquid cyclo hexaane, which was pressurized, heated,
[10:14] Speaker 1: and then blasted with compressed air as it traveled through
[10:17] Speaker 1: the vessels. The boss is at Nipro had high hopes
[10:23] Speaker 1: for this part of the plant, but so far its
[10:25] Speaker 1: operation was proving troublesome. Nypro worker Dennis Lawrence confided to
[10:31] Speaker 1: his wife that there had been leaks. She didn't like
[10:34] Speaker 1: the sound of that and worried for his safety. Cyclohexaye is,
[10:40] Speaker 1: after all, an incredibly flammable liquid, and when it escape
[10:44] Speaker 1: since the open air, it tends to vaporize, forming a
[10:47] Speaker 1: deadly combustible cloud. Dennis, a part time firefighter, had told
[10:53] Speaker 1: his wife that if the cyclohexane tanks ever went up,
[10:58] Speaker 1: there'd be no hope for anyone on the site. The
[11:03] Speaker 1: management was alive to these risks. Arriving workers were frisked
[11:08] Speaker 1: for cigarettes and lighters, and the technicians who worked closest
[11:12] Speaker 1: to the chemicals wore special shoes to reduce the risk
[11:16] Speaker 1: of creating a spark. That said, it was feared that
[11:20] Speaker 1: even someone shifting too quickly in a fashionable nylon shirt
[11:25] Speaker 1: could produce enough static charge to ignite an explosion. Naturally,
[11:33] Speaker 1: when a six foot long crack was discovered in the
[11:36] Speaker 1: fifth of the six steel reactor vessels in March nineteen
[11:39] Speaker 1: seventy four, the whole array was immediately closed down and
[11:43] Speaker 1: allowed to cool off. It was swiftly decided that vessel
[11:48] Speaker 1: five should be removed, but that a costly shutdown could
[11:52] Speaker 1: be avoided if the remaining vessels were pressed back into
[11:56] Speaker 1: service connected with a temporary pipe where reactor five should
[12:00] Speaker 1: have been. This pipe would simply have to be designed
[12:03] Speaker 1: and built on site. No one in authority thought this
[12:09] Speaker 1: close or hazardous decision. They were said to regard it
[12:13] Speaker 1: as no more than a routine plumbing job, but unfortunately
[12:19] Speaker 1: we don't always know what we don't know. A mechanical
[12:23] Speaker 1: engineer might have told them that fabricating such a pipe
[12:26] Speaker 1: was fraught with difficulties. But amongst all the newspaper ads
[12:31] Speaker 1: for cooks and clerks and draftsmen to join the workforce
[12:35] Speaker 1: at Flicksborough, there was also a situation's vacant notice for
[12:40] Speaker 1: a mechanical engineer, and that position had yet to be filled.
[12:48] Speaker 1: Cautionary tales were returned shortly. The plans for the temporary
[13:02] Speaker 1: pipe were supposedly sketched out in chalk on the floor
[13:05] Speaker 1: of the factory's workshop, and if that sounds worryingly cavalier,
[13:11] Speaker 1: you haven't heard the half of it. The existing pipes
[13:16] Speaker 1: carrying pressurized and scalding hot liquid cyclohexane from vessel to
[13:21] Speaker 1: vessel measured twenty eight inches across, but no spare piping
[13:28] Speaker 1: of that size could be found laying around the niproplant.
[13:33] Speaker 1: Instead of delaying the repair to order some a handy
[13:37] Speaker 1: length of twenty inch pipe was substituted, roughly half the
[13:42] Speaker 1: capacity of the original. Pushing the cyclohexane from a broad
[13:48] Speaker 1: pipe into a thinner one creates issues, but some rough
[13:52] Speaker 1: calculations reassured the nprobosses that the smaller pipe could take
[13:56] Speaker 1: the strain. But the original twenty eight inch pipes ran straight,
[14:03] Speaker 1: and by removing React of five, the NPRO workers now
[14:07] Speaker 1: needed its smaller replace to accommodate the considerable drop in
[14:11] Speaker 1: height from vessel four to vessel six, So they gave
[14:18] Speaker 1: the new pipe a dog leg by welding two joints
[14:21] Speaker 1: along its length, So now the pipe ran straight, drop down,
[14:26] Speaker 1: ran straight, a bit more, drop down again, and then
[14:30] Speaker 1: joined React to vessel six. If they'd consulted the relevant
[14:35] Speaker 1: safety standards, the men putting these kinks in the pipe
[14:39] Speaker 1: would have known that their welds weren't up to the task.
[14:43] Speaker 1: For when you force a moving liquid to change direction,
[14:46] Speaker 1: it puts extra strain on the points where your pipe bends.
[14:51] Speaker 1: This is all bad, but we're still not finished. The
[14:58] Speaker 1: forces acting on the pipe's two bends would also cause
[15:02] Speaker 1: a so called turning moment, causing the metalwork to shift
[15:06] Speaker 1: and twist in worrying ways. To counteract these forces, they
[15:10] Speaker 1: need to secure the whole structure firmly. But as they
[15:15] Speaker 1: hoisted their replacement pipe into place, the NYPRO workers merely
[15:20] Speaker 1: perched it on some flimsy scaffolding poles. Each original pipe
[15:26] Speaker 1: was fitted with a bellows joint, essentially a rubber section
[15:29] Speaker 1: that could expand and move to help absorb some of
[15:32] Speaker 1: the forces acting on the rigid metalwork. No one thought
[15:37] Speaker 1: to ask the manufacturer of these rubber joints if they
[15:40] Speaker 1: were strong enough to absorb the forces at play in
[15:43] Speaker 1: this jerry rigged pipework. If the replacement pipe began to
[15:48] Speaker 1: buck and squirm, would these bellows joints just split apart.
[15:55] Speaker 1: A mechanical engineer would immediately have spotted all these dangers,
[15:59] Speaker 1: but there wasn't one on site. A chemical engineer around
[16:03] Speaker 1: the npro operation. He was no doubt highly trained in
[16:07] Speaker 1: his own field, but such was narrow back then and
[16:11] Speaker 1: wouldn't have included even the most basic mechanical concepts. It
[16:17] Speaker 1: was an electrical engineer who oversaw the repair crew, and
[16:21] Speaker 1: he wasn't educated to degree level. And the workmen themselves
[16:24] Speaker 1: can hardly have been expected to spot the flaws in
[16:27] Speaker 1: the design lots more, they were working at breakneck speed
[16:31] Speaker 1: to complete the job. The crack in Vessel five had
[16:35] Speaker 1: been spotted on March the twenty seventh nineteen seventy four.
[16:40] Speaker 1: Once it had been lifted clear, the design, building and
[16:44] Speaker 1: installation of the replacement pipe had taken just thirty hours.
[16:50] Speaker 1: There followed a rather half hearted attempt to test the
[16:54] Speaker 1: dog legged assembly. Gas rather than liquid, was pushed into
[16:59] Speaker 1: the pipe that pressures approximating the normal operation of the system.
[17:04] Speaker 1: The normal operation mine no thought was given to an
[17:07] Speaker 1: abnormal spike in pressure. The system, of course had a
[17:11] Speaker 1: safety valve to release pressure if such a spike became
[17:14] Speaker 1: too much and threatened to burst the vessels and original pipes,
[17:19] Speaker 1: but the replacement pipe was never tested to see if
[17:22] Speaker 1: it would fail before this safety valve kicked in. So
[17:31] Speaker 1: on April fools Day nineteen seventy four, just five days
[17:37] Speaker 1: after the vessel cracked, Flicksburgh was back at work oxidizing
[17:42] Speaker 1: highly flammable cyclohexaane. The management and board of Nipro were
[17:47] Speaker 1: no doubt delighted by this performance. The outward flow of
[17:51] Speaker 1: capro lactum could resume, and so too could the inward
[17:56] Speaker 1: flow of money. Whenever you centralize production, when you put
[18:04] Speaker 1: all your eggs in one basket, as Nipro had, you
[18:08] Speaker 1: can really considerable gains. But this always comes with Risk.
[18:14] Speaker 1: In a recent episode of the new podcast Business History,
[18:18] Speaker 1: host Jacob Goldstein looked at the success of the American
[18:22] Speaker 1: airline Southwest. Southwest began as a budget regional carrier out
[18:27] Speaker 1: of Texas, but it's no Frill's approach soon made it
[18:31] Speaker 1: a major national airline, able to turn a profit each
[18:35] Speaker 1: and every year for forty seven years. That's an unrivaled
[18:41] Speaker 1: feat in the aviation world. One of the secrets to
[18:45] Speaker 1: this success was standardization. While other airlines might have mixed
[18:50] Speaker 1: fleets of Boeing seven for seven jumbo jets or Airbus
[18:54] Speaker 1: A three eighties or smaller short haul aircraft, Southwest has
[18:59] Speaker 1: only really ever operated the Boeing seven three seven. This
[19:04] Speaker 1: made life much easier and cheaper for Southwest. Pilot's, flight
[19:09] Speaker 1: attendants and ground crew only had to learn the foibles
[19:12] Speaker 1: of a single aircraft type. Thus training time was reduced.
[19:17] Speaker 1: When staff went circle planes broke down, substitutions were easier
[19:22] Speaker 1: and flights could continue. But in twenty eighteen came the
[19:26] Speaker 1: first of two deadly crashes involving a Boeing seven three
[19:31] Speaker 1: seven Max. Neither flight was operated by Southwest, but the
[19:36] Speaker 1: authorities grounded all aircraft of that Type seven three seven
[19:42] Speaker 1: maxes made up a third of Southwest's fleet, a crippling
[19:46] Speaker 1: blow to its operation that lost it nearly a billion
[19:49] Speaker 1: dollars in revenue. So what you gain in savings can
[19:56] Speaker 1: be lost in resilience. At Flicksborough, night Pro had discovered
[20:03] Speaker 1: the risks of building one mega factory to make caprolactum.
[20:07] Speaker 1: A single crack to react to vessel had halted production,
[20:11] Speaker 1: disappointing important customers and further delaying the day when the
[20:16] Speaker 1: troubled plant would turn a profit. It's little wander then
[20:20] Speaker 1: that a solution was hurriedly decided upon and a temporary fix,
[20:25] Speaker 1: the bodge together dog leg pipe installed. In fact, Nipro
[20:31] Speaker 1: was so desperate to get back to work that the
[20:34] Speaker 1: cause of the crack in Vessel five wasn't investigated, nor
[20:39] Speaker 1: were the other vessels checked for the signs of any
[20:41] Speaker 1: impending failure. So throughout April and May of nineteen seventy four,
[20:48] Speaker 1: cyclohexane was driven through the oxidizing system without mishap. The
[20:54] Speaker 1: temporary fix the bent pipe knocked up on site became permanent.
[21:00] Speaker 1: The temporary fix was folly, but not seeking to upgrade
[21:05] Speaker 1: it compounded that error. Look around your home, or car
[21:10] Speaker 1: or workplace. You might well see a fixture or appliance
[21:14] Speaker 1: somewhere that broke and was quickly repaired in a less
[21:18] Speaker 1: an ideal way, Perhaps afraid electrical cable was wrapped up
[21:23] Speaker 1: with adhesive tape, or an important office IT system that
[21:28] Speaker 1: fell over and was brought back online with a temporary
[21:31] Speaker 1: workaround for every complex problem, wrote the essayist h L.
[21:38] Speaker 1: Mencan there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.
[21:45] Speaker 1: Mencan had a point. So called band aid solutions are tempting,
[21:50] Speaker 1: but in the long run can prove to be more
[21:52] Speaker 1: damaging than the problems they were meant to solve. Take
[21:55] Speaker 1: the example of patching up an IT system. You may
[21:59] Speaker 1: get everyone in the office back up on their computers,
[22:02] Speaker 1: but a rushed line of code, like a rotten brick
[22:05] Speaker 1: in a wall, can make the whole edifice less sturdy,
[22:10] Speaker 1: and a cheap fix often proves expensive in the longer term.
[22:14] Speaker 1: Bodgies and band aids make it harder to maintain an
[22:18] Speaker 1: IT network, then weeks or months down the line, a
[22:23] Speaker 1: catastrophic outage destroys your business. It's the same at home.
[22:29] Speaker 1: If you're ever tempted to wrap her freyed electric cable
[22:33] Speaker 1: with some tape. Don't here's the advice of the London
[22:37] Speaker 1: Fire Brigade. Always replace faulty leads. Is it worth risking
[22:43] Speaker 1: your loved ones and your home for the sake of
[22:45] Speaker 1: a few pounds. That's exactly the kind of advice Lodwena
[22:52] Speaker 1: Becker's father, who might have endorsed teenage Lduena and her
[22:57] Speaker 1: four brothers remember, were settling down at home on June
[23:01] Speaker 1: the first, nineteen seventy four to watch football on TV.
[23:05] Speaker 1: Their dad, Hohob, was setting off for work at the
[23:08] Speaker 1: night Prop pile, but paused because he noticed something amiss.
[23:13] Speaker 1: Loduena doesn't recall what it was, a rattley door handle perhaps,
[23:18] Speaker 1: or a loose paving stone, but she does remember her
[23:21] Speaker 1: dad stopping immediately to put it right. He was always
[23:25] Speaker 1: meticulous with keeping things in good working order, she said.
[23:31] Speaker 1: The fix completed, who began his slightly delayed drive to
[23:35] Speaker 1: Flicksborough and his plant for Who Becker's was Nightpro's general
[23:42] Speaker 1: manager and the man who had green licked that dog
[23:47] Speaker 1: legged pipe. Cautionary tales will be back in a moment.
[24:07] Speaker 1: Dennis Lawrence was also on the afternoon shift at Nypro
[24:12] Speaker 1: that sunny June Saturday. It was his term to supply refreshments,
[24:17] Speaker 1: so he'd stopped to pick up some tea and sugar.
[24:20] Speaker 1: Dennis enjoyed the camaraderie of working in the plant's control room.
[24:24] Speaker 1: At forty eight, he was older than the other lads,
[24:27] Speaker 1: who called him Granddad, but he was a popular member
[24:30] Speaker 1: of the team. Indeed, he was so avuncular that he'd
[24:33] Speaker 1: played Santa Claus at the staff party the previous Christmas.
[24:37] Speaker 1: Dennis was in a particularly good mood that Summer's day.
[24:41] Speaker 1: He'd weathered some financial difficulties, but had just made the
[24:45] Speaker 1: final repayment on his bankruptcy debts. He was in the
[24:49] Speaker 1: clear at last. The control room was the brains of
[24:54] Speaker 1: the plant, and it never stopped making Capra. Lactam was
[24:59] Speaker 1: a twenty four to seven business, but on a Saturday
[25:02] Speaker 1: there was no need for Nipro's draftsmen, clerks and cooks.
[25:06] Speaker 1: Instead of three hundred workers year, around seventy people were
[25:10] Speaker 1: working across the site. There were men in workshops, storehouses
[25:14] Speaker 1: and laboratories dotted all over the estate. Thomas Crooks, the
[25:19] Speaker 1: security guard, was on duty. A tanker truck driver had
[25:22] Speaker 1: parked up at the factory too. A day or so earlier,
[25:27] Speaker 1: several leaks had been detected in the five remaining reactor vessels.
[25:32] Speaker 1: These leaks came and went, seeming to fix themselves. No
[25:37] Speaker 1: inspection was made since the special spark proved tools needed
[25:43] Speaker 1: to work so close to the flammable cyclohexane had been
[25:47] Speaker 1: locked away and couldn't be accessed. In the control room,
[25:52] Speaker 1: Dennis Lawrence was making the tea while his colleagues were
[25:56] Speaker 1: diligently monitoring their dials and meters keeping up the constant
[26:00] Speaker 1: balancing act to maintain the right pressure and right temperature
[26:04] Speaker 1: to convert cyclohexane into caprolactum. But things were much more
[26:10] Speaker 1: relaxed in a workshop to the north. Instrument technician John
[26:14] Speaker 1: Irvin hadn't had much to do since clocking on at
[26:18] Speaker 1: three five PM was fast approaching, so he thought he'd
[26:22] Speaker 1: start on his packed lunch of sandwiches before anyone could
[26:26] Speaker 1: call to report a faulty gauge. It made scant progress
[26:31] Speaker 1: when a noise boomed across the plant, followed by a
[26:36] Speaker 1: whoosh like the approach of an express train. Through the
[26:41] Speaker 1: workshop window, John could see men running into the control
[26:44] Speaker 1: room while others left it with equal urgency. The technician
[26:49] Speaker 1: put down his sandwich and made for the door to
[26:52] Speaker 1: join those fleeing. The first boom John had heard was
[26:58] Speaker 1: the temporary pipe between reactive vessels four and six breaking open.
[27:05] Speaker 1: The woosh that was hots cyclohexane escape into the air
[27:10] Speaker 1: and forming a vast flammable cloud drifting across the chemical works.
[27:17] Speaker 1: It was only a matter of time before this cloud
[27:20] Speaker 1: encountered a spark or flame. You see the explosion before
[27:27] Speaker 1: you hear it, said John, A tsunami of flame coming
[27:31] Speaker 1: towards me at great speed. That's when I screamed, and
[27:38] Speaker 1: then there was a tremendous gust of wind, and I
[27:41] Speaker 1: remember being lifted off the ground and then something hitting
[27:45] Speaker 1: me on the head. When John regained consciousness, the workshop
[27:52] Speaker 1: had collapsed on him. The ceiling was down, the walls
[27:57] Speaker 1: punched in, windows shattered, and the contents of the room
[28:02] Speaker 1: flung around. Fortunately, some sturdy workbenches had withstood the blade
[28:09] Speaker 1: and sheltered the young technician from being crushed. They also
[28:13] Speaker 1: offered him an escape route, a tunnel to exit the building.
[28:18] Speaker 1: Thus began a hellish journey. Every one of John's fingers
[28:25] Speaker 1: had been broken, but on hands and lacerated knees, he
[28:30] Speaker 1: crossed the glass and sharp rubble. I crawled, and I
[28:36] Speaker 1: was screaming, but I couldn't even hear my own screams.
[28:42] Speaker 1: The blast had deafened John. That wasn't his most urgent problem, though,
[28:49] Speaker 1: because the explosion also left him blinded. He scrabbled madly
[28:55] Speaker 1: from room to room, eventually finding himself outside. He knew
[29:00] Speaker 1: the layout of the plant, but now stumbled sightless to
[29:04] Speaker 1: an unfamiliar landscape, repeatedly crashing into unexpected obstacles. Disoriented John
[29:12] Speaker 1: most feared plunging into an acid storage pit he knew
[29:16] Speaker 1: was somewhere along his route. Miraculously, he negotiated the catwalk
[29:21] Speaker 1: over the acid pool without tottering in. At that point,
[29:27] Speaker 1: I got hopelessly lost, said John. I stood up a
[29:31] Speaker 1: few times and waved my hands around and shouted for help.
[29:36] Speaker 1: No one answered his card. Blinded and surrounded by raging fires,
[29:43] Speaker 1: a badly wounded technician slumped down in the rubble, defeated.
[29:50] Speaker 1: I just thought I was going to die. John then
[30:00] Speaker 1: felt a hand on his shoulder. On seeing the explosion,
[30:05] Speaker 1: two off duty night pro workers had rushed the plant,
[30:11] Speaker 1: using a broken down door as a stretcher. He carried
[30:15] Speaker 1: John to safety. A volunteer ambulance crew had also hurried
[30:19] Speaker 1: to the disaster, and without anesthetic, began to stitch up
[30:23] Speaker 1: the worst of the many wounds across John's face. They
[30:27] Speaker 1: managed to clean me up as best they could, said John,
[30:31] Speaker 1: who assumed it was just the blood from these cuts
[30:34] Speaker 1: that was obscuring his vision. His injuries would, however, prove
[30:40] Speaker 1: to be life changing. Twenty two year old John Irvin
[30:46] Speaker 1: would never see again. Five miles away, the family of
[30:54] Speaker 1: Dennis Lawrence gazed dumbfounded towards the explosion. Had nypro really
[31:01] Speaker 1: gone up? People were phoning up to say, that's exactly
[31:05] Speaker 1: what had happened. Dennis's daughter, I was sure he'd be fine,
[31:11] Speaker 1: but missus Lawrence had no illusions. Your dad isn't coming back,
[31:19] Speaker 1: she said, calmly, as silence descended on the family home.
[31:25] Speaker 1: She was right, and Dennis wasn't the only fatality. Thomas Crooks,
[31:33] Speaker 1: the security guard, was dead. The visiting tanker driver dead too.
[31:39] Speaker 1: Across the plant, twenty eight people had perished. The toll
[31:46] Speaker 1: was heaviest in the control room, where Dennis had worked.
[31:50] Speaker 1: There were eighteen people in there, none of them survived
[31:56] Speaker 1: and lost with them were all the records of what
[31:59] Speaker 1: happened leading up to the blast. It was estimated that
[32:04] Speaker 1: the cyclo hexayne ignited with the force of around their
[32:09] Speaker 1: tons of TNT, easily the biggest peacetime explosion in British history.
[32:16] Speaker 1: It's a miracle, then, that no one beyond the factory
[32:19] Speaker 1: gates was killed. When farmer Gordon Atkinson arrived home close
[32:26] Speaker 1: to the plant, he found his mother shaken, but thankfully alive.
[32:32] Speaker 1: It was like a ghost village, he said. There were
[32:36] Speaker 1: curtains blowing out of broken windows, roofs lifted and set
[32:41] Speaker 1: back wrong, fire raged on at night, pro for ten
[32:46] Speaker 1: full days, and specialist coal mine rescue teams were drafted
[32:52] Speaker 1: in to recover the buried dead. The factory workers helped
[32:56] Speaker 1: in this grim task, but were sent away for a
[32:59] Speaker 1: cup of tea whenever the corpse of a colleague was uncovered.
[33:04] Speaker 1: Nobody got counseling in those days, said one micro employee.
[33:09] Speaker 1: You just had to grin and bear it and get on,
[33:12] Speaker 1: and that's what we did. Questions immediately arose about the
[33:21] Speaker 1: wisdom of Nypro building a cap prolactum megaplant, stockpiling such
[33:27] Speaker 1: vast quantities of chemicals on a single site undoubtedly resulted
[33:31] Speaker 1: in the huge scale of the explosion. The shockwaves of
[33:36] Speaker 1: the disaster spread far beyond rural Lincolnshire. With its sole
[33:41] Speaker 1: caprolactum maker reduced to rubble, the already shaky UK economy
[33:47] Speaker 1: tottered too. Vast sums were wiped off the stock market
[33:52] Speaker 1: as chemical companies, textile weavers and carpet makers faced a
[33:56] Speaker 1: draft of raw materials. There was even a run on
[33:59] Speaker 1: nylon stockings in the shops as consumers panic boart ahead
[34:04] Speaker 1: of looming shortages and expected price rises. Hoobe Becker's, the
[34:11] Speaker 1: general manager at Nipro, had missed the explosion by a
[34:15] Speaker 1: few minutes thanks to a decision to stop for a
[34:19] Speaker 1: little bit of DIY before leaving home. He now set
[34:23] Speaker 1: about defending the safety culture at his plant, likening it
[34:27] Speaker 1: to the stringent procedures observed at say, a nuclear power plant.
[34:34] Speaker 1: When a court of inquiry was convened, Hoobe gave detailed
[34:38] Speaker 1: evidence and supplied copious notes about the decision to replace
[34:42] Speaker 1: reactor Vessel five with a temporary pipe. He argued that
[34:46] Speaker 1: all necessary protocols had been followed. The inquiry, though hampered
[34:54] Speaker 1: by the total destruction of data from the control room
[34:59] Speaker 1: concluded that there had been a litany of errors in
[35:02] Speaker 1: the design, construction and installation of that pipe. The integrity
[35:10] Speaker 1: of a well designed and constructed plant was thereby destroyed.
[35:15] Speaker 1: Redit's report. In other words, a cheap band aid solution
[35:20] Speaker 1: had devastated a multi million pound operation, claiming many lives
[35:26] Speaker 1: in the process. No one faced prosecution for the blast.
[35:32] Speaker 1: Health and safety legislation was still being debated in Britain's Parliament,
[35:37] Speaker 1: but the night pro blast informed the formulation of these
[35:41] Speaker 1: new laws. Henceforth, no one could install such a flimsy
[35:46] Speaker 1: pipe and still claim they'd followed the rules. The Flicksburgh
[35:54] Speaker 1: plant was rebuilt, this time with greater attention to safety
[35:58] Speaker 1: and survivability. The control room, for example, would be placed
[36:03] Speaker 1: further from danger and built to withstand any future explosion.
[36:08] Speaker 1: The new boss, same as the old boss, Hooper Becker's,
[36:14] Speaker 1: stayed on as the general manager, and his family remained
[36:18] Speaker 1: in the area. His teenage daughter, Luduena, enrolled in the
[36:22] Speaker 1: local college. Walking into the common room, she noticed another
[36:27] Speaker 1: student in a T shirt. One of his arms was
[36:31] Speaker 1: extremely scarred. She remembers from his hand right up to
[36:36] Speaker 1: the sleeve. Ludweena asked the boy what had happened. His
[36:41] Speaker 1: reply was simple and direct. Your dad's factory did that.
[36:57] Speaker 1: For a full list of our sources, see the show
[37:00] Speaker 1: notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by
[37:09] Speaker 1: me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilly.
[37:14] Speaker 1: It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound
[37:18] Speaker 1: design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise
[37:23] Speaker 1: bend A. Dafh Haffrey edited the scripts. The show also
[37:27] Speaker 1: wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
[37:30] Speaker 1: Greta Cohne, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey,
[37:36] Speaker 1: and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.
[37:42] Speaker 1: If you like the show, please remember to share, rate,
[37:45] Speaker 1: and review. It really does make a difference to us,
[37:49] Speaker 1: and if you want to hear it, add free and
[37:52] Speaker 1: receive a bonus audio episode, video episode, and members only
[37:57] Speaker 1: newsletter every month. Why not showIn the Cautionary Club. To
[38:02] Speaker 1: sign up, head to patreon dot com slash Cautionary Club.
[38:06] Speaker 1: That's Patreon, p A t r e N dot com
[38:11] Speaker 1: slash cautionary club

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