The Los Alfaques Campsite Disaster of 1978 | Episode 54

Improv classes are famous for teaching people to think on their feet while instilling a yes and attitude. On this show, we teach people to keep their head on a swivel and we have more of a but wait, there's more way of propelling the story forward. Allah and welcome to Doomsday, History's most dangerous podcast. Together, we are going to rediscover some of the most traumatic, bizarre, and unspiring, but largely unheard of or forgotten disasters from throughout human history and around the world. On today's episode, you'll learn the best way to transport flaming materials. You'll see what happens when a company cuts corners in lieu of safety what, and we will see how Google only makes things worse because it's not the show you play around kids, or while eating or even a mixed company. But as long as you find yourself a little more historically engaged and learned something that could potentially save your life, our work is done. So with all that said, shoot the kids out of the room, put on your headphones and safety glasses, and let's begin. Pack your flamenco pants, your paiea and Tapis forks, and your rosary beads. We are heading to the Kingdom of Spain. It is the most popular tourist destination in all of Europe. It's a fascinating country, overflowing with history and culture. Now I've never been there myself, but not for lack of interest. I've just always been concerned that if I went, I am never leaving and who's going to feed my dogs and my family. Well, we're here now, you've got to be thinking. Obviously we've come for Latoma, Tina. You know that tomato throwing festival that makes the streets of Bagnol look like a bunch of blood bank trucks flipped. It's good, lots of injuries, but not a lot of plasma and red blood in all that sauce. No, clearly, we're here for the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona. This thing obliterates hundreds every year, but only fifteen have been flung or waffle stomped to heaven in over a century. Interesting tidbeit, though most of those who do finish with a toe tag were killed when a bullhorn staffed through their lungs. But no, what we're doing today you will be able to do from the comfort of a beach chair or a picnic table. We'll be spending our time in the town of alkanar Platia. It's a charming coastal town whose name sounds vaguely like a spell, and it's tucked up in the province of Tarragona in the northeast corner of Spain, just south of Barcelona. It's known for its beautiful sandy beaches, charming cafes, palm trees, tranquil atmosphere, and Mediterranean cuisine. You can stroll along the traditional Spanish promenade while the warm glow of the setting sun paints the sky and hues of orange and pink. Who wouldn't want to hang out here, especially outdoors? Well, they have something in alkanar Platia that lets you take it all in like you've probably never seen before. Ocean side camping. That's right. Bring your painters, easel, your soccer ball and your reflections journal. We're going camping. The losal Fakes Campsite was a particularly popular holiday destination for families and beach enthusiasts from all across Europe. North Americans need to be reminded once in a while that in Europe you can visit three or four countries in an afternoon. If you've ever been North American camping before, you're probably used to the bugs in the screaming family in the thirty or so competing boom boxes. But it's not all bad. It's just not all good. But now try imagining camping in Spain at losal Fakes. And yeah, I know it sounds like I'm saying from morself fought, but I promise you I am not imagine settling in between the pines, just a short walk from the turquoise waters of a world class coast line, pristine golden sandy beaches, swimming in crystal clear turquoise waters, enjoying gentle sea breezes, and having your breath taken away by the views of the beautiful Mediterranean. Then in the evenings, gather around the camp fire, fill up on tapas and sangrea, and listen to the music under the stars while falling asleep to the sound of waves crashing in the background. The tranquil atmosphere and stunning landscape provide a sense of peace and serenity and magical is not a turn that we throw around loosely on this show. And I don't think I've even never heard it used in a sentence about a campground, yet here we are. Now. Please hold that image in your mind for just a minute. The date of our story is July the eleventh, nineteen seventy eight. Las Elphakes was bustling, maybe bursting. See the estimates were as many as five thousand, but probably closer to one thousand. People were there that day, mostly vacationing families, children, young adults. Like we said, I believe the park capacity was supposed to be closer to about two hundred and fifty or five hundred people, but I don't know. Maybe people were sneaking each other in their car trunks like it was a drive in movie theater. Families and strangers from across the continent shared laughs, eight played together as the sun streaked in through the trees above, and around two thirty that afternoon, fog began to roll in. Normally, high humidity combined with offshore winds can make for some misty or foggy mornings, but this was something different. First Off, it was the middle of the afternoon. Second, it wasn't coming from the sea. It was blowing or drifting in through the trees from the road. It was a fog like cloud, and it was carried on the breeze, drifting over the campsite. It blew in through the trees, immersing around tents and cabins as if it was almost conscious. Gassy, vaporous tendrils hugged the ground, wrapping around everything and everyone. It grew increasingly thick, too thick to even see through, and campers were absolutely fascinated by it. People approached it out of curiosity, thinking it had to be some kind of freak weather phenomenon. You couldn't tell where it began or where it was going. Children played in it, dogs barked at it. You ever hear the idea that fog is basically a cloud's poor, flightless cousin, Yeah, think about it. Only in this case, it didn't smell like fog. Fog that forms over the ocean can have a salty smell, and fog that forms over a city can have a vaguely industrial fart smell to it, But this one had a vaguely petrochemical smell to it. Campers looked around, quizzing each other for guesses, but no one had any idea what was happening, not that it would have mattered as unexpectedly as it arrived. A thundering and colossal explosion rang out, and only moments later the mystery cloud, the entire campsite and everyone in it burst into flames. Panic and chaos spread as quickly as the fire. People immediately found their hair, skin, and clothes crackling around them. Many found themselves trapped inside their tents, unable to escape the inferno. Imagine a nylon tent melting all over your skin while you're playing hot potato with a zipper. People ran to the sea to extinguish themselves, but witnesses claimed that the sea was boiling from the fireball, which, if true, certainly brings up shades of our Saint Pierre episode. For the first hour, the sight of the disaster was complete chaos. I mean, who has a disaster plan in place for something this unexpected, this unimaginable and complicated, And nothing feeds more than a complete lack of understanding. Comboe with constant surprise, which came in the form of secondary explosions. Vehicle fuel tanks and cylinders of cooking gas created deadly secondary blasts, and that's one thing to be actively engulfed in flames. It's quite another when you then find a flaming gear view mirror embedded in your temple. Rescue refforts began immediately. Survivors managed to escape the worst of it, which were mostly those in the ten percent of the campground that hadn't turned into a boiling fireball. Together with locals, they loaded the injured in the cars and fans and drove them at full speed to the closest hospitals. Emergency services, including firefighters, police and medical personnel were swiftly alerted and descended to the scene, and what they found was a rescue reffort that was quote handled in a completely unorganized fashion without any triage. Well two things. First, I once hit a lady who stepped in front of my car when I was sixteen, and everyone said, don't touch here, just wait for the cops. But I was all that and helped her into the car and then bounced to the hospital. So I understand their enthusiasm. And second, these people just watch their entire camp burst into flame, remove their eyebrows, and jump, scare their bowels clean, yet they are still willing to help people with grotesque injuries, including skin sloughughing off at the touch. Many of the injured had burns covering more than ninety percent of their bodies. These people handled this stress like well intended emotional rocks, and frankly sloppy or misguided is still better than nothing. When police fire an ambulance personnel arrived, it didn't take more than a quick glance to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the disaster. They were faced with, triaging the kinds and numbers of injuries you might expect after a prolonged battle. Even the Spanish Civil Guard armed forces were brought in to help search for the devastated campground for any survivors. Hundreds of people in grave need of medical care lay scattered everywhere. People were also trapped in various buildings and structures caught up in the rapidly spreading fire, and also needed immediate attention. In total, one hundred and forty people with severe burns were transported to one of two local hospitals. Fifty eight severely burned patients were taken to the Francisco Franco Hospital in Barcelona, which had a burn unit of thirty one beds. Eighty two severely burned patients were taken to Lafaye Hospital and Valencia, which had a bird unit with fourteen beds, and you can see the problem right there. No hospital has resources to cover hundreds of simultaneously severely burned patients. And it wasn't just life threatening burns. There was also the smoke inhalation, which, if you will remember, more people die in fires from smoke than from fire, except in the case of building explosions. And of course, in today's story, with so many amateur rescuers racing the wounded a hospital, several developed severe shock and had no measurable blood pressure on arrival, and that was part of the problem. Panic Uber does not provide vital medical care en route. So you're racing into a hospital with a screaming, skinless man in the backseat who will not put on a seat belt and screamed louder than the radio the entire time. Would you know what to do? This will not be a fun one, but fun and need do not always correlate, So here we go. The best practice is to seek professional medical help as soon as possible. You already know the words, but we are working under the premise that you don't have time to wait for rescue services to come find you. First off, obviously, before you put anyone in your vehicle, make sure they're not smuggling flames anywhere. You can smother fire with water or blankets, unless you're dealing with a chemical fire. Cold water on a chemical burn can react with the chemicals and make things worse. You're also going to want to quickly remove any clothing or jewelry or accessories from the burned area. That stuff can stick to and even sink into the injured skin, which is zero fun to remove or to have removed after the fact. If it is possible, you're going to want to cover the burn with a dry cloth or some kind of non stick dressing. You want to protect it from contamination. If the victim is conscious and having trouble breathing, encourage them to sit upright to help open the airways. And now the really important part about that, the ABC protocol, the Airway Breathing and Circulation. Ready, here we go. It's basically a standard protocol. They call it the Primary Survey. It's just a protocol for assessing life threatening respiratory conditions, which, as we've discussed in previous safety segments, breathing, Yeah, kind of important and fire can really mess it up. First, you want to make sure their airway is open and not obstructed. If there's anything blocking, it's okay to try to clear it, as long as you're not forcing them to throw up, And if it's not something you can do, you can sometimes reopen an airway by kind of repositioning the head and the neck. Next, you're going to want to look listen and feel for the signs of breath and look for movement of the chest. Listen for any breathing sounds, and feel for airflow. If their breathing sucks, you can initiate rescue breathing or artificial ventilation with one of those bag valve masks that probably one in twenty seven hundred of you actually own. How many hands am I going to need for this? Well? I can't really answer that, so hopefully you used at least one of them to call nine one one earlier on. That's right, So for everyone else, check out our previous episodes where we've covered mouth to mouth resuscitation. Breathing, Yeah, pretty important. But the third part is to check for signs of circulation, which you automatically think means check their pulse but it's so much more than that. You have to know if they're bleeding. If there's no pulse or obvious signs of bleeding, you're going to want to initiate cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and you're going to need to control any life threatening bleeding by applying direct pressure. This is of course easier said than done. Bleeding requires pressure to stop, but burned skin wants to avoid pressure at all costs. I don't know if I've said this before, but the one thing burned skin wants least are fingerprints. Speaking of burned skin, the burn victims have a lot of trouble maintaining their body temperature, and ironically they can actually develop hypothermia. So you want to cover them with a clean sheet or a blanket to help maintain their body temperature. That's, of course, outside of the original clean dressing I mentioned. And I know I say this a lot, but severe burns can be extremely painful and traumatic, So offer reassurance and comfort to the victim. Just provide a little emotional support and keep them as calm as possible. Sometimes being a hero means being too scared or skived to do something and just doing it anyways. Two hundred and seventeen people died that day, and many more over the weeks and months to follow. The total number of people who died as a result of their injuries rose to at least two hundred and seventy with more than three hundred people wounded. Of the thirty patients who died during the first few days after the disaster, most had deep burns covering more than ninety percent of their bodies. Two months later, the mortality rate among the injured was about eighty five percent. And when I say three hundred injured, these people were more than injured. You know you're more than injured when you're involved into what all appearances was the spontaneous combustion of an entire campground. Injured setting quotes for emphasis that could be life changingly bad. Remember when I said how popular Lassaay was with foreigners. All of all the people killed her that day, only four were actually from Spain. The others were from France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, all over the place, and they were evacuated to their own countries as quickly as they could. The task of identifying all of the victims after the fact was unenviable. You have to remember DNA testing wasn't a thing yet, and most of the dead weren't carrying ID They were mostly just in swimsuits. Now, the campsie did have records of reservations, but the building they had been kept in had been completely destroyed. All of the victims were eventually identified, mostly from dental records, and survivors were left with significant physical and emotional trauma. So what the hell happened? Well, let's rewind a bit and start over from a different point of view. Around ten in the morning that day, fifty old Francisco Mberland Villena pulled his tanker truck into a refinery plant in Lopabla, the Mafumet. It was an oil refinery. Yeah, what do they do in those places, Well, they take crude oil and they convert all the hydrocarbons in it to turn into all kinds of useful stuff gas, heating oil, jet fuel, petroleum, asphalt, you name it. The plant was owned by Spain's National Petroleum Company and Patrol. Villena didn't work for Impatrol. He worked for Cisternas Reonadas. There are a trucking company that specializes in the transport of hazardous chemicals. All Villina had to do was kicked back till his truck was filled and take it on a routine trip to another refinery and Portolano, about six hours away. Yeah, at least he didn't have to fill it himself, and today he would be hauling a full load of propylene. That's kind of nasty stuff. I mean, it's not overly dangerous or toxic to humans. I mean, sure it will make you swoon and puke and pow. But what made it a hazardous chemical was its volatility. You can use propolene to manufacture a huge range of products, everything from photographic film to handcream to rubber ducks. It normally wants to exist as a gas, but they can press it down into a liquid so they can squeeze more into a tank for transporting. Vilna left around lunch after a heated phone call about road tolls, and by two thirty that afternoon he was passing through the region of Alkanar. Tanker drivers were under instructions to skip the motorway and stick to a narrow, winding coastal road that passed directly through several densely populated areas. As he neared the law Selfac's campsite, his truck blew attire and this caused him to swerve and he lost control and he ran into a ditch beside a wall separating a row of bungalows and tents from the roadside. The crumpling of the vehicle and the shifting weight of the load caused a rupture in the tank wall, and within seconds it was leaking liquified gas, which spread through the area on both sides of the road. Now there are two different versions of what happened next. The cloud continued down the road until it reached a discotheque just northeast of the site, which most believed to be the source of the ignition. It plus twelve chalets were raced to the ground by fire, killing everyone inside. The flame raced back to the cloud, all the way back to the tanker, which exploded with enough force to leave a crater sixty five feet around and five feet deep. The resulting fireball reached about a thousand degrees celsius or eighteen thirty fahrenheit, and everything within three hundred feet of the truck was immediately destroyed by the concussion of the blast. Once the cloud and the campsite ignited. The fire ravaged everything within about a thousand feet. That was about ninety percent of the campsite. So what the hell actually happened? Was a mechanical was a people my voice? Valena's tank container? Sorry, cisternas Yonada's tank container. Well, it lacked emergency pressure release valves, so it didn't really meet the requirements for carrying flammable liquids. And I know what you're thinking, how could ocean Gate be so sorry? How could cisternas Reyonadas be so negligent? Well? Two things. First, tests on the remains of the tankers revealed that it had been mostly used to transport corrosive substances, which yes, did greatly weaken the structural integrity of the tank. Okay, so wait, think of it this way, ah, I don't know a home made many submersible. They are designed to withstand a certain amount of pressure. If you pay no attention to matters of maintenance or initial design and then repeatedly put it under too much pressure too many times, it will absolutely fail and kill everyone it can. Investigators also found that the tanker had been overloaded, excuse me, severely overloaded, and testing revealed microscopic stress fractures in the metal from all the over pressurization too. But there was a third thing, and you're not gonna like it. It turns out that safety rules and regulations had been loosened, pressure release valves had no longer been mandatory. But wait, there's more. The daily temperature for this part of Spain and summer gets as high as thirty five celsius or ninety five fahrenheit, and gases they like to expand in the heat, and all that meant the tanker could have been swollen as high as two hundred and fifty psi. Do you ever overinflate a basketball and throw it on the ground. Even without safety valves, a non corroded, non stressed out, structurally sound, and properly fitted tanker should have been able to maintain its structural integrity in a fire long enough to allow people to escape. So why would they overfill it? Well, normalcy bias turns out that overloading tankers was kind of a part for the course. At damp Troll thirty two, similarly overloaded tanks had left the refinery in the last six months. Normalcy bias just means that because those previous trucks hadn't exploded. None ever would. Valina had been hauling twenty three and a half tons or twenty three thousand, five hundred kilograms. That's more than eight thousand pounds above the max load for this tanker. The Terragona refinery didn't even have an automatic shut off valve to prevent this kind of overfilling. They didn't even have a meter to measure how much they had been filling. Uh huh. Yeah, but wait, there's more. Valina didn't know about the overloading. He didn't know about the type and class of the cargo, and there was no means for him to check on the pressure level of the tanker after he departed, and no way to monitor it while he was in transit. He also did not have hazmatt training because the company figured, after twenty years experience not dying, that that was good enough. Cisternas Ranada's quote, did not consider it necessary to provide the driver with new training or information regarding the type of product transported. It was just not considered need to no information. They didn't even label the tanker. I'm guessing it was to maintain the mystery for the rescue personnel. The inquiry also spanked lasal Faces for not having fire alarms or extinguishers or emergency exits, which I will agree with the assessment, but seriously, a fire extinguisher in this scenario against this inferno, it feels a little too. You might not have been assaulted if you hadn't worn that outfit. For my tastes. Bottom line, a man with twenty years experience drove an under maintained, stressed out, and internally coroded hulk of a tanker across winding country roads through populated areas. And do you know why the company had drivers take these roots because they didn't want to reimburse the toll fees. The tanker was a full four tons heavier than expected, which if you have any experience behind a big wheel, you know how weight only makes it harder to control and stop a vehicle. The truck blew attire, which sent it into a ditch up against the wall of loss alf Faces. The tanker came apart and barfed out huge quantities of liquid propolene, which, once no longer under pressure, quickly expanded into a much much more massive cloud of propylene gas and, once mixed with oxygen, all it needed was a spark. The loss alf Fakes campsite disaster led to a significant outpouring of grief and mourning from the public. The government declared three days of national mourning in nineteen eighty two for end patrol staff and two highly ranking cistern As Ranada's employees were prosecuted for what roughly and colorfully translates to perpetuation of reckless recklessness. They were convicted of gross criminal negligence and sentenced to one to four years in prison, which seems like kind of a short sentence considering the magnitude of the day damage done, which is why I sound like this when I tell you that all the cases were quashed on appeal. Cistern As Rayonadas paid out about thirteen million euros or about sixteen million dollars to settle all the civil suits against them. Six months after the tragedy, a completely renovated laws cell Fake's campsite was reopened to the public. But they had a bit of a problem. They just couldn't shake the reputation. No one wanted to go to Camp Fireball, no matter how beautiful the beaches were, and the Internet only made things worse. It's hard to draw in parkoers when a quick Google search shows grisly images of charred human remains. Now, Spain does have a unique legal protection called the Right to be Forgotten, to help protect people in these kinds of circumstances, but the courts told them to take it up with Google directly knowing Google has more lawyers on retainer than probably all of Spain, so no dice. The disaster led to significant improvements and safety regulations for campgrounds and tours accommodations. It also resulted in new legislation making it illegal for vehicles carrying dangerous cargo to be transported through populated areas when an alternative route was available, and only at night when it wasn't. It highlighted the importance of emergency preparedness and the need for increased, not decreased, safety measures to prevent similar tragedies. And in the end, if the legacy of this disaster save lives by preventing even one similar catastrophe in the future, to me, that is as powerful as the grizzliest Google search. To this day, the lass Alphake's Campsite disaster remains one of the most devastating incidents in Spanish history, I certainly said, but wait, there's more. Enough times in this episode, but wait, there's more. There is a version of this story, backed up by multiple witnesses, that brings into question the chain of events they say. After the initial crash, Francisco Vilena got out of his truck to assess the damage. So far, so good, except allegedly his next move was to pull out a cigarette. I know they went out of their way to keep their drivers in the dark about stuff, but the whole idea of anyone sparking a flame beside a leaking tanker defies belief. This couldn't even happen in a film without immediately feeling the insulting sting of lazy writing. As stories go, this version is so incredibly cynical. I've got a hard time believing it wasn't invented by the press to sell papers or the companies trying to decrease their liability. Sounds conspiratorial, I know, but when it comes to companies acting on crappy fundamental levels, my eyes have been repeatedly blown wide open on this show. Excuse me, sorry, A moment the Titanic summer and imploded because the company cut every possible corner and even brained about it publicly. Excuse me, oh sorry, Whether I'm telling you a story from sixteen forty one or twenty eighty seven, the common denominator across all space and time is a company looking to save a few bucks ahead of safety. And the only thing we know for sure about Filena's involvement is that has watch stopped at two thirty six pm. It was charred black and still attached to his wrist. You can reach out to us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook as Doomsday Podcast, or fire us an email to Doomsday Pod at gmail dot com. Older episodes can be found where have you found this one? And while you're there, please leave us a review and tell forty one of your friends thank you. If you'd like to support the ongoing production of the show, you can find us at Patreon dot com slash Funeral Kazoo or just buy Me a Coffee dot com slash Doomsday. But if you could spare the money and had to choose, we ask you to consider making a donation to Global Medic. Global Medic is a rapid response agency of Canadian volunteer offering assistance around the world to aid in the aftermath of disasters. In crises, they are often the first and sometimes the only team to get critical interventions to people in life threatening situations, and to date they have helped over three point six million people across seventy seven different countries. You can learn more and donate at Globalmenic dot CoA. On the next episode, this is going to be weird, I am presenting to you a first then recorded history of the podcast industry. The next disaster will be a tetralogy of terror, a tale as old as time that kicks you in the teeth four different ways, now four five, five that kicks you in the teeth five different ways, and the most exciting part, it is all presented in four D. That's right. This is a fully immersive episode that you will be able to partake in in real time. So until that happen opens, we'll talk soon. Safety goggles off and thanks for listening.