The Flixborough Disaster
Today is the 50th anniversary of the Flixborough disaster. On 1st June 1974, a cloud of hot cyclohexane vapour escaped from the Nypro UK chemical plant at Flixborough near Scunthorpe and ignited, causing the biggest explosion in Britain since the Second World War. Of the 72 people working at the plant that Saturday afternoon, 28 were killed and another 36 were injured. About 2,000 properties, in a five-mile radius of the plant, were damaged and the fires on the site were still burning 10 days later.
The disaster, the biggest UK peace-time insurance loss to that date, was estimated to have cost the UK insurance industry £36 million, not including claims for loss of life and consequential loss. D G. Earl, Commercial Union’s local manager at Scunthorpe who lived about 3 miles from the plant, wrote about the company’s response to the disaster for the staff magazine. He heard the explosion at 4.53pm and by 5.15 was at the company’s Scunthorpe branch to see if it had been damaged. He reported that although their offices were unscathed, the nearby Midland Bank, Woolworths, and Dewhurst’s Butchers had all suffered as a result of the blast. He spent the rest of the evening and the following morning contacting and advising customers with business premises in the area, before getting in touch with all the branch staff and asking them to arrive to work early on Monday morning. By 9.30 that morning they knew the names of everybody they insured in the areas which had been impacted by the disaster and the names of people reported missing who held policies with them. By the Thursday of that week every customer had either reported a claim or been visited by a member of staff and told to proceed with claims. Within a week, the company had paid claims for people killed and for cars destroyed as well as arranging for the repair of properties.
Similarly, over at General Accident more than 200 claims were received in the first few days: 50 for material damage; four for consequential loss; 160 for home insurance; and 22 under motor policies. The claims were for properties as far as five miles from the explosion and the staff magazine reported that one claim, for £28,000, was for damage to a single storey warehouse made of reinforced concrete 1 1/4 miles from the Nypro plant. General Accident set up a temporary claims bureau in Scunthorpe, supported by staff from surrounding branches, while the local manager attended meetings of local residents affected by the blast. The company set aside around £1.5 million towards the disaster — its biggest ever single incident loss. The board minutes for 3 July 1974 give a breakdown of the estimated loss, which came to £2.950 million. This was made up of 0.112 million for damage to residential properties, 2.61 million for the company’s share in the property insurance and consequential loss cover for the plant itself (9% of the total cover) and 0.228 million for suppliers’ extension insurance for Courtaulds — the textile and-made fibre conglomerate which relied heavily on the caprolactam produced by the Nypro plant for the production of nylon fabric. General Accident had reinsured for £1.42 million leaving a net loss of £1.53 million.
Contemporary newspapers discussed the immediate impact on insurance company shares (Commercial Union fell 7p to 114p and General Accident was down 6p to 107p) and the importance of the worldwide reinsurance market for spreading the cost of the disaster. There was also discussion of the property damaged that had been underinsured, and the need for insurers and brokers to keep up with the emerging risks caused by technological advancement. General Accident’s fire department manager was quoted as saying that the disaster had “prompted renewed action by all those concerned with safety and accident prevention — including General Accident — to try to ensure that such devastation will never happen again.”
Mr Earl ended his article in Commercial Union’s staff magazine as follows: “Slowly but surely, life is returning to normal, but having spent the last ten days seeing widows, visiting people whose lives have been shattered, their property and possessions badly damaged and their children visibly frightened, it is an experience I would not like to repeat. I think everyone glibly reads, sees, or hears of disasters in the news media, but until caught up in the middle of one, the full implication and effect of a disaster can never be fully appreciated.”
