Flixborough 1974 Memories – John Irvine

John was an instrument technician at Nypro. He worked in a building which housed the electrical technicians’ workshop and storeroom, north of where the explosion was.

Like a lot of the buildings, it had plate glass windows all the way along. It was a very pleasant, sunny, June the 1^st, 20 – 21° degrees. I’d been on site for a couple of hours. I was doing the afternoon shift 15:00 until 23:00. I’d only worked at the works for six months. I’d started in the December of 1973. There were a couple of friends who were also instrument technicians, who were working that day. They were doing an overtime day and they were working on a problem with some of the instruments that weighed the chemicals as they were being bagged. One of them came and told me where they were working.And he said, we’ll just carry on working there until we fix the problem. So you can just relax, and if there’s another fault, you can deal with that one.

But there hadn’t been any other faults on that shift, for me to deal with. Basically, what I did was waiting for someone to phone and say we’ve got a problem with this instrument, or we’ve got a problem with that, can you come and see to it? But I was just sitting in the office, and it was almost 17:00, so I thought I would have my sandwiches while the going was good, it was nice and quiet. And it was whilst I was eating that I heard the first small explosion. And then I heard the fire alarm go off. There was a section of the works between where I was and where the fire was so I couldn’t actually see exactly what was happening.

But I knew it was serious and I could hear the fire even almost immediately after it started. And I could see a few men running. One of them running towards the control room and a couple of men running away from it.

I was anxious, of course, because I knew the dangers that were there. Although I worked there for six months, there hadn’t actually been a fire drill whilst I was there. And so, I didn’t know exactly what to do and I thought the best thing to do would be to go to the control room to see if I could help.

But I just got to the exit door of the building I was in. There was a common exit / entrance door for instrument technicians and electricians. And I opened the exit door and by that stage I could see the top of the fire, above the control room, and the works and the flames. Hard to tell because it was a chemical fire, so it was quite clean, but I reckon that the flames were at least twice as high as the works, so they probably were between 200 to 300 feet high. And it made the sky look like it was crinkling with heat. And the noise was, even at that stage, the noise was really quite loud and intense. So, I knew the fire was sizable. I had no idea how big. And I think just in astonishment I just looked at the fire for, I don’t know 5 seconds, 10 seconds. And that’s when the big explosion happened.

You see the explosion before you hear it. I saw what I’ve always described like a tsunami of flame coming towards me, at great speed. That’s when I screamed. And then there was a tremendous gust of wind. And I remember, being lifted off the ground. And then something hitting me on the head, and I was knocked unconscious. When I regained consciousness, I don’t think I was unconscious long. But when I regained consciousness, I was buried in rubble. There were parts of walls, the ceiling had come down, there were light fittings, there was bits of engineering equipment. The place was literally a bomb site. But luckily on either side of me were work benches. Which were about 3 foot high, and I think the ceiling of the floor above had come down and dropped on to the benches. So, it kind of gave me a kind of a tunnel to try and crawl through. I wasn’t going to go out the front of the building because I knew that was where the fire was, and I’ve got a good visual memory of where I was. Now seemingly, there was an electrician in the next part of the building. I went through that part, I crawled on my hands and knees. I couldn’t see anything at this stage.

I didn’t know I would always be blind. And I didn’t know that when the door that I was holding open whilst looking at the fire, was slammed shut, the shards of glass were blown from the window panel straight into my face and that’s what caused my blindness.

But I didn’t know that at the time, so I knew I couldn’t see, but I just assumed that… Well, you don’t think of long term, you just think I can’t see now and that’s it. So I crawled and I was screaming, but I couldn’t hear even hear my own screams. Apart from in my own head, I couldn’t hear them through my ears.

The electrician, who was in the electrical part of the building, was pinned down, face down on the ground by a girder that had come across his back. And apparently, I crawled over the top of him. But there was that much rubble and stuff around it, I didn’t know what I was crawling over. And he thought I just left him, and I didn’t even know I had crawled over somebody.

And I managed to get to where the toilet area was. That was a ceramic floor, and it was covered with smashed wash basins and mirrors, glass, toilet pans. So, trying to crawl on that on my hands and knees, I was kind of slipping everywhere because it was ceramic on ceramic.

I had got to the outer wall of the side of the building and managed to get out. I don’t know if it was a hole in the wall or where the window space was, but I managed to get outside and thought from that stage I would be able to move towards the railway embankment which was on the North side of the works. I stood up at that point, rather than crawl. I stood up to walk and walked into something. I couldn’t ever remember anything being where I walked into it was just like a great big object. And I was told afterwards by some people who came to see me in hospital that it was part of the roof of the building I was in that had been lifted off and dropped. Down the side of the building. That’s why I didn’t understand why there was something in the way.

So, I was back onto my hands and knees and I crawled from there. I knew there was an acid pit with a metal grid catwalk over it. And I crawled across that grid with my left hand on the left edge of it and my right hand on the right edge and my left foot on the left edge of my right foot on the right edge. It was waste acid, a mix of acid and sewage and some chemical compound that neutralised the acid. I didn’t want to fall into that. So, I was crawling along that and screaming. The noise was so intense you couldn’t hear anything. I don’t think I’ll ever hear anything like that again. But I managed to get across that and then went on to what was like a large area of rubble with rocks and lumps of concrete and that kind of thing, which was like a big waste area for any excess chemical that was to be spilt. And at that point I got hopelessly lost and I stood up a few times and waved my hands around and shouted for help. And eventually I bumped into a large boulder, and I think that’s the first time I lost hope and I thought that everybody must be in at least as bad a condition as I was in. So, I sat down to shelter behind the rock. And you know, I just thought I was going to die at that point. I did get up again, waved my arms and sat down again. I couldn’t hear anything but the fire. But at that point somebody came and put his hand on me. And it was two men who did work at the at Nypro, but they weren’t working that day and they managed to get into the works before the police and the army cordoned off the area. So, they’d come in just to see if they could help anybody. They did come and see me in hospital and I thanked them, but I can’t remember their names now.

But one of them got a door that had blown off a building and they used that as a stretcher. And they put me on the door and carried me to the riverbank. Where there was one St. John’s ambulance man. I asked them what the works was like and they said everything was on fire and destroyed.

I was left with the St. John’s Ambulance man, whose name I never got. But he was obviously very brave, and I had lost a lot of blood by this stage. What I didn’t know was that my left arm was badly damaged. And all my fingers and thumbs have been broken, so I did all that; got out of the building, moved things, lifted things, with broken fingers and thumbs. But when you think you’re going to die, you get strength that you wouldn’t normally have.

So, I was at the riverside and I remember the St. John’s Ambulance man saying that there were no ambulances there at the moment, he said they have all gone away with people who are not as badly as injured as you, but they will be back he said. And I remember I said: I feel so tired, I want to go to sleep and he said don’t go to sleep. If you go to sleep, you won’t wake up. So, and he was swabbing my lips with water, but he wouldn’t give me anything to drink. Quite wisely, because I didn’t know that at the time. He looked after me until the ambulance came and I can remember a little, going to Scunthorpe hospital.

The paramedics and the ambulance, one of them just kept talking to me within the journey. And I remember being wheeled into the hospital and there were people crying and kids crying, remember that.

And two nurses started to look after me. They cut my clothing off. They couldn’t undress me properly, so they just cut my clothing off. And I remember them stitching my ears without anaesthetic, that was agony. Well, until I got to the St. John’s ambulance man, nothing hurt.

And then once I believed that I was safe, everything, even the bits that were not injured hurt. But the nurses, were apologising and the glass had gone through my ears, apparently as well. They managed to clean me up as best they could. They couldn’t do anything with my face, of course, because that was going to need surgery. And I remember one of the nurses saying: I like your dress, where were you when it happened? And I know one of them was because the other one said I like your dress too, where were you? And one was shopping in Scunthorpe town centre, and I think the other one was at the festival at Normanby Park. But wherever they were, they were both out socially and they both came into the hospital to see if they could help.

I’m mentioning this because the two men who were not working that day but came in, and the St. John’s Ambulance man who volunteered to come in and the two nurses who weren’t working that day but volunteered to come in. In the end, it was that kind of bravery and help, which determined my future career, really.

The two men, Ian and [… name unknown…], who were trying to fix the weighing machine. They were both killed because my bosses came to see me in the hospital and said do you know where they were working? And I was able to tell them where they were working and that’s where they found their remains.

And from that point I was transferred. Luckily for me, the ophthalmologist, who worked at Scunthorpe Hospital, was on leave and I was told that they couldn’t do my eye surgery in Scunthorpe. It would have to be in Grimsby or Doncaster. And I said I live in Doncaster, I want to go to Doncaster. And that’s where it was taken. After that the day is a blur really.

Flixborough 1974

An exhibition to commemorate the Flixborough Disaster of June 1974.

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Flixborough 1974 Resource Pack

To assist local schools with this topic, Arts and Heritage Learning have produced a number of teacher resources that are available to North Lincolnshire schools.

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