July 10, 1926: The day lightning blew up a town in New Jersey
A hot and muggy New Jersey afternoon in July 1926 would produce a thunderstorm that destroyed a military installation.
The culprit wasn’t a tornado, nor was it damaging winds.
A single bolt of lightning caused an explosion so great that it left a crater in the ground.
Note:
This is an adaptation of an article I originally wrote for The Vane
on July 10, 2014. Since neither Gawker nor The Vane exist anymore (outside of the Internet Archive), I’m reworking and publishing this article by popular request.
A low-pressure system moving over the Great Lakes on July 10, 1926, dragged a warm and humid airmass over the eastern United States.
High instability allowed for thunderstorms to flourish throughout the region.
One of those storms trekked over Rockaway Township, home to the Lake Denmark Naval Ammunition Storage Depot, which was part of the larger Picatinny Arsenal. This facility was packed to the brim with leftover munitions from the first World War.
Shortly after 5:00 p.m. local time, a bolt of lightning struck Temporary Magazine Number 8, starting a fire that would spread to other magazines nearby. The blaze then ignited more than 600,000 tons of explosive materials housed within.
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| A crater left behind by the immense explosion. Photo: U.S. Army/Rutgers University |
The tremendous blast destroyed every building within a half-mile radius, killing 19 people and leaving dozens more injured. Folks reported finding debris from the explosion up to 22 miles away.
Shaken by the event and loss of life, the incident fundamentally changed how the U.S. military handled explosives in the years that followed. The explosion at the Picatinny Arsenal prompted Congress to create the Department of Defense Explosives Safety Board.
Lightning-sparked fires are unsettlingly common. The National Fire Protection Agency reported that lightning caused an average of 22,600 fires per year between 2007 and 2011—more than one-quarter of those were structure fires.
[Top image courtesy of Unsplash.]
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