Tliltapoyec Explosion

Tliltapoyec Explosion
Tliltapoyec Harbor Explosion

The warehouse burning before the main explosion. Note the streaks from exploding shells
Date	23 March 1928
Time	2:46:34 am
Location	Tliltapoyec district, Tepetenxipalitlan, Pulacan
Deaths	260+
Non-fatal injuries	500—2000

The Tliltapoyec Explosion, also known as the Tliltapoyec Harbor Explosion, was an incident that occurred on March 22nd, 1928 in the city of Tliltapoyec, now a district of Tepetenxipalitlan, Pulacan. Several government-owned munitions depots along the city waterline were sabotaged by agents of Zanzali, Pulacan's enemy in the ongoing Hanaki War. The resulting explosions killed over 260 people and injured anywhere from 500 to 2000 people. While not as devastating in terms of property damage or loss of life as the following Xaltozan explosion, the detonation at Tliltapoyec was still one of the largest artificial non-nuclear explosions in history. The nearby rail hub, crucial to the Pulatec war effort and industrial output, was severely damaged and forced to close for repairs. The resulting damage and economic slowdown caused logistical and commercial issues in Pulacan and impacted the nation's ability to wage war.

Background

Tliltapoyec was initially founded as a fishing village during the Zacapine governate period, with its deep, protected natural harbor serving favorably. This deep water both lended its name to the town and encouraged its transformation into a shipping and receiving port-of-call in the 18th and 19th centuries. By the mid-1800s, it had transformed into the primary destination for Zacapine clipper ships, and its warehouse district was the largest in the Vespanian Ocean. Tliltapoyec was also strategically positioned in relation to its larger neighbor, Tepetenxipalitlan; the city government of the former was extremely friendly towards the development of industrial works and manufacturing complexes that eventually came to employ citizens from across the city and from the northern environs of Tepetenxipalitlan. As such, it effectively served as the "port city" for the southern capital, and the two enjoyed a sister-city relationship. One of the first Pulatec railways was constructed between Tliltapoyec and southern Tepetenxipalitlan, later extended to Cuicatepec. As Pulacan built a large, central military, a sizable arsenal was required to supply it. Due to ease of importation, Tliltapoyec was selected as the site for the Central Munitions Depot, the place from which most munitions would enter the country and be distributed northward, in 1896. The facility was top-of-the-line for its time, but quickly fell into disrepute as mismanagement and lack of war readiness took hold over the ensuing decades.

The late 1920s saw regional tensions in Malaio erupt into interstate conflict termed the Hanaki War. As a result, the Central Munitions Depot was rapidly expanded to nearly triple its original, peacetime size. Both imports and domestic production of armaments and munitions skyrocketed during this period as Pulacan turned its nascent industrial base toward a near-complete war footing. Tliltapoyec, with its rail junction and massive munitions works, was an obvious target of high value. Due to its location far from the frontlines, however, it was easily-defended and hard to reach by the conventional means available to enemy nations. As such, the Zanzali military began to develop a plan of espionage in which covert agents would act as migrant dockworkers in order to set the plant alight and destroy it from the ground. Upon arriving in the city sometime in late 1927, the agents found their task would be much easier than expected—the rush to mobilization and military expansion had meant that what normal safety precautions existed were being flaunted in the name of swift delivery to the front. The facility, however, was heavily guarded, and the pair decided that targeting the nearby rail yards with munitions stolen from the facility would be a more foolproof and realistic method to prevent the Depot from supplying munitions.

Explosion

A smoke plume from the explosion, visible in Tepetenxipalitlan

On the night of March 22nd, the Central Munitions Depot had taken in a shipment of cordite, picric acid, and trinitrotoluene off the Zacapitec steamer SS Erendira. The ship carrying the supplies had been delayed in docking due to inclement weather, and many depot workers had to work double shifts on short notice to complete the job. The usual haphazard arrangements of munitions was significantly worsened by the rush job, as many workers resentfully left containers improperly sealed or on the warehouse floors for the morning shift to sort. The chaos of workers staying late meant that security enforcement was nearly impossible; several guards left their posts before work had even completed, as the new shift was delayed in arrival by the sheer number of people near the Depot complex. As such, it was extremely easy for the pair of agents to sneak inside and make off with cargo, claiming its destination for a late-night rail shipment north. Their plan, at this time, was to burn the wooden boxcars in the railyard and distend the tracks in one fell swoop, thus preventing any shipments from the logistics hub. The Erendira cast off in a hurry at 11:45 pm, in a last-ditch effort to rectify its shipping schedule. Following this, many of the exhausted workers were eager to leave the depot, leaving only a skeleton night-watch crew to watch over the dangerously-mislaid explosives and nearby yard.

The pair of Zanzalese agents likely set the first fires at around 12:30 am on the 22nd, with what they believed to be TNT loaded into empty boxcars. The explosive containers were instead nitroglycerin, a far more potent explosive compound. As such, the initial rail blast was far larger than expected, shaking the railyard and distending most of the tracks. Crucially, it is believed that this blast sent either flaming or white-hot debris through ventilation chimneys and roof skylights in one of the Munitions Depot warehouses. Due to the time difference between the 1:15 am railyard explosion and the 3:00 am final depot blast, it is believed that a fire began in one of the peripheral wooden buildings, likely one designed to store rifles, instead of one of the central munitions warehouses. Fire crews had been alerted to the blaze shortly after it began by a night watchman; understanding the crucial nature of the yard and its proximity to the warehouses, the local Fire Chief directed all hands to combat the blaze. As such, many were on scene when the nitroglycerin detonated inside the boxcars. The compound can still explode when wet, thus rendering the firefighting equipment useless in preventing the explosion. This first blast killed or injured numerous firefighters, and drew in onlookers and volunteers willing to help fight the now-uncontrolled fire. Many of these were from the nearby depot, seeking to prevent the fire from spreading and likely unaware in the confusion that some of the depot's peripheral buildings were already burning. At 2:21 am, a succession of small chain blasts erupted, likely from detonator caps and picric acid, drawing the attention of those battling the blazes. This signified that much of the depot compound had been engulfed by flame at this point, reaching temperatures well exceeding 300°C. Realizing they would soon be encircled by flames, many attempted to flee or relocate to more favorable ground, unaware that the final blast would be so large as to make any escape attempts at this late stage futile. The explosions opened up holes in the walls of most of the warehouses, allowing fire to spread uncontrolled within the munitions compound. At 2:46, after the interiors of several central warehouses reached 600°C, the TNT flashed over into an explosion, detonating the surrounding buildings with the force. The explosive force manifested by this happened in such a short time that it acted as a single, massive explosion.

The final blast leveled fourteen warehouse facilities and damaged 12 more, destroyed 150 railroad cars and locomotives, caused several piers to collapse or buckle, and formed a 140-meter-by-72-meter crater in the quay. Ships at the piers were either tossed from their moorings, dashed against the debris, or launched by the tsunami-like waves in the aftermath. At least 260 people were killed: nearly the entirety of the Tliltapoyec Fire Brigade, several ships' crewmen, two policemen, nearly a dozen factory workers and several pedestrians struck by debris. Falling objects and flying detritus were reported as far away as 1.8 kilometers away, when a piece of iron drove itself through an automobile windshield, killing the driver. The Erendira, already on its way to its next port of call, was tossed violently by the tsunami but narrowly managed to stay afloat. Pulatl citizens were awoken as far away as Tonanytlan by the blast, assuming it was a powerful earthquake. The resulting smoke plume was visible across the bay, and sympathetic fires raged for a week across the city after the initial blasts.

Aftermath

A pier close to the explosion site after the blast

The blast had leveled much of the eastern part of the warehouse district. The city of Tliltapoyec had suffered a sudden and massive loss of life, including most of its fire brigade. As a result, fires in the city caused significantly more damage than usual as ordinary citizens were left to combat them. Much of the city's wooden shantytowns and tenement housing were wiped out by the fire, with death tolls simply untold as the neighborhoods were largely populated by internal refugees and migrant workers from across the country. The sheer destruction to its working-class housing and delay in concerted reconstruction until after war's end meant that Tliltapoyec never regained its prewar economic status or power. Rendered merely a subservient environ of Tepetenxipalitlan, the city was eventually annexed in a controversial vote as a ward of the capital city in the 1970s. The Central Munitions Depot was rebuilt in another location, as the ruins would take too long to clear; some ruined warehouses remain as part of a memorial park. From 1928 onward, the Union Security Forces established multiple dockside logistics depots across the south to prevent such a blast from damaging its supply chain so significantly.

The Tliltapoyec railway junction, at the time the busiest in the country, was severely damaged. Trains not targeted by the initial fires were thrown off the rails by the blast, with some tracks being ripped from the ground by the force. The yard was used for assembling cargoes from the ports and manufacturing centers across the south of the country and dispatching them to various destinations of military importance. With this logistical hub gone, military planning was forced to reevaluate all possible routes for shipping cargo. Temporary receiving depots were constructed across the south coast of Pulacan, and many hunters were "encouraged" to surrender their weapons and ammunition to government forces to make ends meet. Horse-drawn carriages were conscripted to augment the now-overloaded rail network in the south and the foothills. The Djebe Railway Project, designed to augment the singular trans-Pulacan railway line, was forcibly put on hold until the 1930s as funds were diverted to rebuilding the Tliltapoyec railyard and replacing lost locomotives and rolling stock. As a result, the military was forced to defend the one trans-Pulacan line as its only means of rail resupply across the Djebe Highlands.

After being blindsided by the act of sabotage, the Union State central government authorized the creation of the first domestic intelligence agency in Pulatec history.

Following the explosion, the Union Security Forces were left with a sudden and immediate dearth in critical munitions. The central importance of both the munitions depot and the railway hub meant that many offensive operations either currently underway or in the advanced stages of planning had to be placed on hold while new sources of ammunition were sourced. The Security Forces commander, Marshal P.P. Molebatsi, appealed to Zacapican for a temporary increase in munitions supply. The resulting year-long period saw exports of munitions to Pulacan grow exponentially, with numerous ships conscripted to fill the missing munitions. One of these ships was the SS Tlatetexoani, which later collided with the Tyreseian ship SS Pasca in the Xaltozan Narrows of Zacapican in a separate tragedy.

See also

• Hanaki War
• Xaltozan Explosion