Flixborough 50 Years On: Stirring Memories and Sharing Memories

Paul Okey visits the Flixborough 1974 Exhibition with his dad to discover the stories behind the disaster and the impact it had on those affected

THE MOST striking image at the Flixborough 1974 Exhibition is not of the plumes of smoke cascading out of the scarred remains of the Nypro site. It is not the scenes of devastation that are graphically illustrated by newsreel footage that take you to the very heart of the site as it continues to burn. Nor is it any one of the faces and stories of the 28 people who lost their lives as a result of the explosion, sobering though they prove. It is the large photo of a young women happily walking her dog up the road overlooking the plant. Taken before anyone outside of North Lincolnshire had ever heard of the tiny village of Flixborough, the scene could have been played out at a hundred other industrial sites across the UK in the 1970s.

Now synonymous the world over with disaster and devastation it is easy to forget that Nypro was once just another chemical plant tucked away in a quiet corner of the English countryside.

That all changed of course at 16:53 on June 1 1974 and while the physical impacts of the explosion are all but gone – a industrial park now sits on the site - the scars still remain, especially for those closely associated with Flixborough.

“One of the best things I heard was from a gentleman who came in to share his memories,” says Eveline van Breemen, curator of the North Lincolnshire Museum exhibition commemorating the disaster. “His shift ended a few hours before the explosion. He later on helped the miners’ rescue to find his friends and colleagues. Before the exhibition he had hardly spoken to his family about it and his kids have been very grateful that it has encouraged him to share. And he told me how relieved is for doing so.”