1971 Georgia Thiokol Plant Explosion That Killed 29 Now Largely Forgotten

A half-century ago, an explosion ripped through a Georgia factory that made flares for use by the Army in the Vietnam War, killing 29 workers and injuring 50 more.

But today, few people remember the accident in Woodbine, the dangerous conditions the employees worked in, and the small amount of compensation that injured survivors and family members received afterwards, according to a recent report from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“There is no scholarship on this,” said Melissa Jackson, whose mother and cousin were killed in the 1971 blast. “There is no historical memory or understanding of this. For me, the memory of the whole day is still very vivid and very painful and very clear. But outside of those few of us who remember, it’s like it has been erased.”

Local students in the coastal community were not taught much about the incident, and little research has been done.

The Alabama-based Law Center, which has championed the rights of oppressed and impoverished people in the U.S. since the early 1970s, is hoping to elevate awareness of the explosion and its consequences. The non-profit organization said it granted $50,000 to the Thiokol Memorial Project in Woodbine last fall.

The Project’s museum there displays some 350 artifacts from the disaster, but it is run mostly with the help of volunteers and is attempting to secure a larger tract of land that can serve as a memorial to the victims, the Law Center reported.

The blast and its remembrance also highlight how the victims were compensated, compared to what might be available today. The Law Center article noted that the U.S. government, which had contracted with Thiokol Chemical Co. to make the flares, argued that victims had no right to legal claims.

After years of court battles, a federal judge found the government guilty of negligence. Reports showed that the Army had found that the materials used in making the flares was so explosive that the Thiokol plant would need to be shut down and reconstructed to make it safer. But the Army did not share its findings with the manufacturer.

Some of the most seriously injured victims received more than $100,000. Under Georgia workers’ compensation laws at the time, though, fatality benefits for dependents of the dead workers were limited to $17,000 – roughly $123,700 in today’s dollars.

“These people that were injured were not well compensated,” Arnold Young, a Savannah, Georgia, attorney, told the Law Center.

The limit on dependents’ death benefits in the 1970s is considerably less than the roughly $270,000 cap allowed by statute today, according to a national report produced by the Workers’ Compenstion Research Institute. That’s a significant improvement over the $230,000 maximum allowed just two years ago.

But all dependents don’t receive the maximum. Death benefits in 2022 are limited to two-thirds of the deceased worker’s weekly wage, or a maximum of $675 a week, and spouses lose the benefit if they remarry. The maximum death benefit in Georgia is more than what Florida allows but less than the maximum allowed in Alabama.

For injured workers, Georgia continues to rank near the bottom in U.S. in some types of benefits allowed, according to the WCRI report.

The Feb. 9, 1971 explosion did lead to some safety improvements, the Southern Poverty Law Center noted. Federal safety inspectors regularly checked the remaining and rebuilt section of the Thiokol factor in Woodbine, and workers were trained to use fire extinguishers.

Photo: Aftermath of the Thiokol plant explosion in Southeast Georgia, in 1971. (Georgia Public Broadcasting)

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