The Explosion

At 9:04:35 Mont-Blanc exploded with a force stronger than any manmade explosion before it.

The steel hull burst sky-high, falling in a blizzard of red-hot, twisted projectiles on Dartmouth and Halifax.

Some pieces were tiny; others were huge. Part of the anchor hit the ground more than 4 kilometers away on the far side of Northwest Arm. A gun barrel landed in Dartmouth more than 5 kilometers from the harbour.

After the Blast

The explosion sent a white cloud billowing 20,000 feet above the city.

For almost two square kilometers around Pier 6, nothing was left standing. The blast obliterated most of Richmond: homes, apartments and business, even the towering sugar refinery.

On the Dartmouth side, Tuft's Cove took the brunt of the blast. The small Mi'kmaq settlement of Turtle Grove was obliterated.

More than 1500 people were killed outright; hundreds more would die in the hours and days to come. Nine thousand people, many of whom might have been safe if they hadn't come to watch the fire, were injured by the blast, falling buildings and flying shards of glass.

And it wasn't over yet.

Within minutes the dazed survivors were awash in water. The blast provoked a tsunami [?] that washed up as high as 18 meters above the harbour's high-water mark on the Halifax side.

People blown off their feet by the explosion now hung on for their lives as water rushed over the shoreline, through the dockyard and beyond Campbell Road (now Barrington Street).

The tsunami lifted Imo onto the Dartmouth shore. The ship stayed there until spring. City in Shock>