Los Alfaques disaster
The Los Alfaques disaster was caused by the explosion of a road tanker near a holiday campsite on 11 July 1978 in Alcanar, Spain.
The disaster resulted in new legislation in Spain, restricting the transit of vehicles carrying dangerous cargo through populated areas to night time only.
The site, which is located at km 159 on the N-340 national road, is 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) south of the town of Sant Carles de la Ràpita.
It is about 2 km south of the nearest township, Sant Carles de la Ràpita, although it belongs to the territory of the Alcanar municipality.
[5][3] Others argue that there was no mechanical failure or traffic accident before the loss of containment, with the overstressed pressure vessel failing at a weak point.
[6] Within seconds highly flammable propylene started flashing out of the ruptured tank and formed a white cloud that drifted into the campsite and towards a discothèque to the northeast.
Within moments of the cloud reaching the discothèque, it ignited into a flash fire that quickly returned to the source of the leak thus causing the weakened tanker to explode.
[7] This generated a massive boiling-liquid expanding-vapor explosion (BLEVE), whereby the entire content of the tank car vaporized and burnt almost instantly in a fireball with a diameter estimated between 40–60 m[8] and 180 m,[9] resulting in tremendous levels of thermal radiation, as well as a significant blast wave.
Contributing to the high mortality figure was the inappropriate medical care given en route to the hospital,[8][12] especially for the wounded that were driven south towards Valencia.
Later, some workers at the Tarragona plant stated they heard the driver heatedly arguing with someone on the phone and demanding money for the motorway toll.
[citation needed] The official inquiry determined that the truck had been severely overloaded, and also lacked emergency pressure relief valves, which would have helped prevent the BLEVE.
The tank container was manufactured on 13 December 1973 by a workshop from Bilbao,[15] and at that time it did not meet the requirements for carrying flammable liquids, since it lacked emergency pressure release valves.
Tests on the remnants of the steel tank revealed microscopic stress cracks consistent with corrosion caused by previous loads of improperly pressurized anhydrous ammonia.
[2][10] Possibly compounded by the effect of an external impact that caused additional structural damage, these factors likely led to the almost instantaneous rupture of the tank when the flames flashed back into the tanker.
The Tarragona plant lacked either a meter to measure the amount of gas dispensed or an automatic shut-off device to prevent overfilling, and consequently most tanks were consistently overloaded.
The driver was neither informed of the overloading, nor about the type and class of the cargo, and there was no means for him to check the pressure level of the tank before he departed or to monitor it in transit.
The inquiry also determined that, between 3 January and 7 July of that year, 32 tanks driven by several different individuals left the Tarragona refinery overloaded.
[16] In 2012 the owners of the still-operating campsite sought relief through Spanish courts under the newly approved "Right to Be Forgotten" Act passed by Spain, arguing that Google Search results were unfairly weighted towards the 1978 disaster and were driving away their business.
The campsite owners protested that even 30 years after the disaster, the top 12 Google search results for "Los Alfaques" still focused on the 1978 tragedy, including many gruesome thumbnails of burnt human remains, stacked caskets and coroner procedures during cleanup of the campground.
The film is loosely based on real facts, and contains blunders and factual errors, such as cars or registration plates which could only have appeared years later, or the driver spending the night before at home with the already (over)loaded tanker parked in front of his house.
