Exhibition marking 50th anniversary of Flixborough chemical plant disaster opens

• Video report by Michael Billington

An exhibition to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Flixborough disaster has opened in Lincolnshire.

Shortly before 5pm on 1 June 1974, a massive vapour cloud exploded at the Nypro chemical plant in Flixborough, near Scunthorpe, killing 28 people and leaving 36 seriously injured.

The blast destroyed houses in the village, and was heard as far away as Grimsby and Doncaster.

At the time, it was the largest peacetime explosion in Britain.

As the 50th anniversary of the tragedy approaches, North Lincolnshire Council has opened a new exhibition at the North Lincolnshire Museum in Scunthorpe, after inviting people to contribute their memories and items associated with the disaster.

“I ran downstairs, the door had been blown off, and I came out to see the metal flying up into the air and a huge black cloud billowing up in to the sky," said one witness, Andrew Green.

"[It's] a very, very vivid memory.”

“When you look back at the news footage, and the video footage, it’s just incredible the intensity and the scale of the fire afterwards.”

Eveline van Breemen is a collections assistant at the museum. She said the collection of items and memories means visitors can "really imagine" what the day would have been like for people who were there.

“One lady wrote in about how her brother passed away that day - and it took them four days to find him - but all the time they still had a little bit of hope even though they knew it was very unlikely," she said.

"When you read that - yeah, definitely goosebumps.”

The exhibition runs until November.

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