LAUNCH: Explosion Survivor

He was only 10 years old when the French freighter Grandcamp exploded at the Texas City docks, but Lake Highlands resident RAYMOND DUPUY remembers the morning of April 16, 1947, like it was yesterday. Sixty years ago this month, Dupuy was playing tops on his school grounds when he heard fire truck sirens and noticed yellowish-orange smoke rising into the sky. The strange color was the result of burning ammonium nitrate fertilizer, part of the ship’s cargo, and despite the efforts of the town’s volunteer fire fighters, the blaze only grew more intense. Dupuy was inside taking a test when the ship exploded. “I saw glass slide across the floor. I turned, and a window shade hit me, shielding me from the flying glass. Classmates were dazed and screaming, and I tried to go down the stairs, but a wall had collapsed over them. … I started praying to the good Lord Jesus to help me.” More than 500 people in the town of 18,000 died in what is now known as the Texas City Disaster. Dupuy eventually made it home to find the south wall of his house blown in, but luckily, no one in his family was seriously injured. “There is an old adage that says, ‘There are no atheists in foxholes,’” he says. “I would add to that: ‘And there are no atheists in explosions.’”