Families remember blast victims

A total of 28 people died in the Flixborough plant explosion

Relatives of people killed in one of Britain's worst industrial accidents will pause to remember their loved ones on its 30th anniversary.

Twenty-eight people died in the explosion at the Nypro Chemical Plant in Flixborough on 1 June 1974.

The blast, which was caused by a highly flammable liquid leaking from a faulty pipe, caused widespread damage to homes and property in the surrounding area. The plant closed in 1981 and little of the original building remains.

Just before 1700 BST an explosion engulfed the plant at Flixborough, hurling debris into the surrounding area.

Witnesses reported seeing a massive vapour cloud over the plant and some residents thought an atomic bomb had gone off.

Residents injured

Eighteen of the deaths occured inside the plant's control room and were due to windows shattering and the roof collapsing.

No one escaped from the room where the blast occurred and fires raged for days, hampering rescue work.

The explosion also injured 53 residents living near the £18m plant, which was reduced to a mass of rubble and metal.

A report from the Health and Safety Executive said the number of casualties would have been far worse if the blast had happened on a weekday when the main office would have been full of workers.

Health and safety experts found a number of problems during their investigation of the explosion, including a plant modification which had been carried out without a full assessment of the potential consequences.

They also found there had been no pressure tests on the installed pipework modification.