In this episode of "The Trial Lawyer's Handbook" podcast series, litigation attorney Dan Small recounts his experience as a new prosecutor in the U.S. Department of Justice's Criminal Division, where he was unexpectedly assigned a month-long case involving a deadly grain elevator explosion. He explains that grain dust, a byproduct of moving grain, becomes highly explosive when suspended in the air, then highlights the dangers this poses for maintaining grain elevators and shares details of two devastating explosions that occurred in 1977: the Continental Grain elevator in Louisiana and the Farmers Export elevator in Texas. As a newly minted lawyer, Mr. Small was tasked with investigating and trying the latter case, a significant challenge but also an extraordinary opportunity for learning and growth.
Podcast Transcript
Dan Small: When I joined the U.S. Department of Justice's Criminal Division, right out of law school, I never imagined that my first significant case would be a month-long trial involving grain dust. But of course, that's one of the lessons of trial law. Every case is a new world. As a trial lawyer, you have to immerse yourself in that world: learn it, understand it and then use it to tell your story.
Grain dust is a natural byproduct of moving grain. As all those kernels of grain rub together, they create dust. In a pile on the ground, you can put a blowtorch to it and not much will happen. But stir up that pile so it's suspended in the air like a cloud and an amazing thing happens: It becomes highly explosive. Indeed, grain dust can be four times more explosive than coal dust, and we've all seen accounts of explosions in coal mines. So, the obvious answer is to keep it on the ground and to keep the ground clean. Seems pretty simple. It's not.
Across the Midwest, big mechanized combines work day and night to harvest the grain. The farm trucks bring it to a local grain elevator to hold until the next train comes. Each railcar on a train can carry almost 200,000 pounds of grain. As a train gathers railcars from different grain elevators, it often stretches more than 100 railcars.
When the train gets to an ocean port, each railcar is unloaded in what's called the rail dump. The grain is then transported by conveyor belt through, usually, an underground tunnel to the base of the grain elevator and then carried up into the elevator to hold it until the next cargo ship comes to be loaded for export. At each step along the way, grain dust is produced. When a railcar is dumped, it can produce a small cloud of grain dust. By the time all 100 railcars in that train are unloaded... that's a lot of clouds.
You have to be careful to avoid sparks, of course, but you also have to keep the grain elevator clean. Constantly. Meticulously. Because if, God forbid, a spark ignites the cloud of grain dust, it can cause an explosion. If the grain elevator is kept clean, it will more likely be a minor explosion that goes nowhere, but if the elevator is dirty, with piles of grain dust everywhere, that initial explosion can stir up and ignite the next pile, and then the next pile, and the next pile, and begins a chain reaction that can continue for as long as there are piles of grain dust to feed it.
Grain elevators today use various mechanical and technological devices to help keep things clean, but not so long ago they relied on crews of workers with brooms. It didn't always work. Management or managers often wanted those workers doing more productive things, like dumping railcars.
On December 22, 1977, the Continental Grain elevator in the port of Westwego, Louisiana, exploded, killing 36 people. The explosion traveled up the 25-story concrete tower, which came crashing down on the administration building, where workers were celebrating the holidays. There were, literally, not enough workers left alive to confirm the exact cause and responsibility for this tragedy. It's hard to build an investigation without witnesses.
Five days later — five days later — the Farmers Export grain elevator in the port of Galveston, Texas, blew up. The explosion began in the rail dump, traveled 250 feet along an underground conveyor belt and blew the roof off the 20-story reinforced concrete tower. Eighteen workers were killed, all from exploding grain dust. This time, there were some survivors and other sources to aid an investigation.
I had not even graduated from law school when the explosion itself happened, but as a brand-new lawyer with the Department of Justice, with 18 people dead, it became my responsibility to investigate, indict and ultimately try the case. It was an absurd challenge, given my youth, but also an extraordinary opportunity. One that delivered a number of important lessons that we'll talk about in the next several episodes.
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