I just posted this on my other site (IACOJ), figgured it was well worth posting over here:

The Halifax Explosion

Thursday, December 6, 1917, The morning had started like so many others, with ships beginning to move in and out of the harbor through the narrows after the antisubmarine nets were opened for the day. The Mont-Blanc, captained by Aimé Le Médec, was entering by way of the right channel at a leisurely four knots when another ship, the Norwegian Relief ship Imo, was spotted approaching from the opposite direction in the path of Mont-Blanc. The Imo was traveling the wrong direction for the channel it was in, and moving at almost seven knots, which was exceeding the speed limit of the harbor. The narrows left little room for maneuvering.
Mont-Blanc blew its whistle once, the standard signal to assert right-of-way, essentially ordering the Imo to move into the proper channel. The Imo's whistle sang out twice in response, signaling that the Imo's captain intended to maintain its course. Both captains refused to yield as the whistles blew hurried signals at one another through the morning haze, until at the last minute both captains ordered actions to attempt to avoid collision. The Mont-Blanc turned hard to the left, and the Imo put all engines in full reverse, which caused it to drift towards the center. Imo's prow struck the starboard side of the other ship, and as the steel hulls scraped across one another, a shower of sparks flew which ignited the vapors from the barrels of benzol fuel on the deck of the Mont-Blanc.
The crew of SS Mont-Blanc, aware of their cargo, immediately took to the lifeboats, screaming warnings that no one heeded. They rowed for Dartmouth, leaving the now furiously burning ship to drift towards Halifax, propelled in that direction by SS Imo's impact.
The blazing ship drifted in to the Halifax shoreline, up to Pier 6, and the fire soon spread to the pier's wooden pilings.
All of the north end firefighters knew the sound of the dockyard alarm box, known as Box 83. The alarmed seemed to ring almost every day, pulled by some dock worker each time coal embers dumped from ships' boilers ignited the dock When the Box 83 fire call came in on the morning of December 6 it would have been routine had it not been for Mr. Constant Upham. Mr. Upham owned a north end general store and was among the few residents in that area with a home telephone. He could see that the fire aboard the munitions ship Mont Blanc was far more serious than burning embers, and phoned all the surrounding fire halls to tell them so. Firefighters from West Street, Brunswick Street, Gottingen Street, and Quinpool Road all responded to Mr. Upham's call. in fact calls and alarms flooded in at the Halifax Fire Department. Firemen rushed to the scene as Mont-Blanc drifted towards shore. Some rode on the city's first motorized fire truck, called the Patricia. The truck and wagons--13 vehicles in all-- headed to Pier 6, where the blazing Mont-Blanc had come to rest.
West Street firemen were the first to arrive riding the Patricia at the pier 6 fire, along with a car carrying the fire chief and his deputy. The firemen began rolling out the hoses. For all but one of them, it would be their last alarm.
When the Firefighters arrived at Pier 6 the heat was so intense they couldn't look at it. Chief Condon pulled the Box 83 a second time to get additional help. An a retired and respected fireman by the name of John Spruin, heard the alarm, put on his fire suit and drove a horse drawn pumper along Brunswick Street.

Then at 9:04:35 am, as officials were trying to figure out what to do next the Mont Blanc exploded with a force of 2.9 kilotons. For almost two square kilometers around Pier 6, nothing was left standing. The blast obliterated most of Richmond: homes, apartments and business.

Located near the center of the explosion, Patricia's crew never knew what hit them, except for Billy Wells. Wells was ripped from the drivers seat of the Patricia and thrown quite a distance. His right arm and eye were badly injured, but he hung on to the engines smashed steering wheel. Moments later a tidal wave carried him up and back down Richmond Hill. He got tangled up in telephone wires and almost drowned with ensuing Tsunami that was generated by the blast.
Chief Condon's McLaughlin roadster was wrecked, as were the other pumpers. Both chiefs and the rest of Patricia's crew were killed, as were the departments wagon horses. Thirty firemen and 120 volunteers who survived the explosion pushed themselves and their apparatus to the limit to douse the wooden houses on fire. News of the explosion spread quickly and within hours trains arrived carrying firemen, apparatus and hose.
There were three lucky firefighters that day. Patricia left one on duty Firefighter in the station when it responded to Box 83. The man had come into work that day despite having a serious bout of the flu, and was in the bathroom when the alarm came in. He couldn't come out in time despite the chief's anger. Another Firefighter, Albert Brunt, survived the explosion because he couldn't hang on to a moving fire engine. The part-time firefighter was pushing his paint car along Gerrish Street when he heard the alarm go off that morning. He knew the Particia, Halifax Fire Department's new fire engine, would soon roar past, and he planned to jump aboard as soon as it slowed to turn onto Gottingen Street. But Brunt didn't get a secure grip on Patricia's rails and he slipped off, scrapping his knees and hands. The boys on the truck hooted and hollered after him as they headed for the Pier 6 fire.
John Spruin, the retired fireman who had hitched up the old pumper to go to the "big one", he was killed on the way by shrapnel from the Mont Blanc while driving the rig to the call.
There had been about 20 minutes between the collision and the explosion at 9:05. It was enough time for spectators, including many children, to run to the waterfront to watch the ship burning, thus coming into close range. It was enough time for others to gather at windows, and thus an exceptionally large number of people were injured by flying glass -- 1,000 unfortunate survivors sustained eye damage.
Over 1,900 people were killed immediately; within a year the figure had climbed well over 2,000. Around 9,000 more were injured, many permanently; 325 acres, almost all of north-end Halifax, were destroyed.
Much of what was not immediately levelled burned to the ground, aided by winter stockpiles of coal in cellars. As for SS Mont-Blanc, all 3,000 tons of her were shattered into little pieces that were blasted far and wide. The barrel of one of her cannons landed three and a half miles away; part of her anchor shank, weighing over half a ton, flew two miles in the opposite direction. Windows shattered 50 miles away, and the shock wave was even felt in Sydney, Cape Breton, 270 miles to the north-east.
Two American ships which had just left Halifax returned when they saw the explosion and mushroom cloud, and offered the assistance of their medical nurses and orderlies. Firefighters from neighboring cities arrived before nightfall to help in the effort to put out the burning structures, but many of their fire hoses were of different sizes, and unable to connect to the Halifax taps and hydrants.
The rescue effort was not an easy one. Most of the utilities had been knocked out of commission by the blast, and many of the people working to save their fellow citizens were injured themselves. A panic was stirred up after rumors of second impending explosion, sending many rescue workers retreating to higher ground. The second explosion never came, but the distraction was a significant setback to rescue efforts. The following day, the already battered city was hit by a brutal blizzard which caused further complications. But firefighting, rescue and medical teams began arriving by train within the day after the explosion, offering relief for exhausted local doctors, nurses, and rescue workers.
All told, about 2,000 men, women, and children were killed that day, and some 9,000 injured. Makeshift mortuaries were left with the grim duty of processing bodies, which arrived by the dozens. Trains came and went from the city, bringing in men and women to help in the rescue efforts, and hauling away the dead, injured, and homeless. Dartmouth was less hard-hit, but far from spared. Approximately one hundred souls died there, and many of its buildings were damaged by the blast.
On that day, the Halifax explosion was the most powerful explosion that had ever been created by man. As a result of the blast, the Imo was found beached on the Dartmouth shore, lifted there by the massive tidal wave. One of the Mont-Blanc's cannon barrels was thrown three and a half miles, and her 1/2 ton anchor was later found two miles in the opposite direction. The event would hold the record as the most powerful man-made explosion for the next twenty-eight years, when it was bested by the first atomic bomb test explosion in 1945.


Remembering Those Firefighters Who Died
Edward P. Condon, Fire Chief
William P. Brunt, Deputy Chief
William T. Broderick, Captain
Michael Maltus, Captain
John Spruin, Hoseman
Walter Hennessy, Hoseman
Frank Killeen, Hoseman
Frank Leahy, Hoseman
John Duggan, Hoseman