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By Helen Cross. Real-life interviews and drama combine to mark fifty years since the Nypro disaster, in the small village of Flixborough in North Lincolnshire.

At 4.53pm on 1st June 1974, an explosion ‘of warlike dimensions’ silenced the nearby town of Scunthorpe. One of the UK's worst ever chemical explosions, it turned the Nypro chemical plant at Flixborough into a wasteland, burning for ten days and scorching surrounding fields. Two hundred houses were destroyed, over a thousand properties damaged and sending a toxic gas cloud drifting towards Yorkshire. Thirty-six people were seriously injured and twenty-eight men died.

This drama-documentary interweaves the testimony of people who were directly affected by the disaster with a fictionalised reconstruction of key preceding events.

Everyone in Scunthorpe – and for fifty miles around - knows exactly where they were when Nypro went up. The writer and producer both lived nearby as children. They both heard the explosion and remember the trauma of its aftermath on local people. The disaster shocked the nation, and led to extensive, hitherto unacceptably strict developments in health and safety legislation.

Pete and Les are trying to restart the reactors at the Nypro chemical works when they notice a rise in pressure. Peggy and Arlene are having fun at the Appleby-Frodingham Steel Gala, unaware of how their world is about to change.

Les...John Godber
Peggy...Jane Thornton
Arlene...Martha Godber
Pete...Peter Caulfield
Sports Commentator...James Hoggarth
Narrator...Helen Cross
Sound Design...Mary Ward-Lowery and Ilse Lademann.
Music by Ben Nicholls.
Director...Mary Ward-Lowery

We would like to thanks Paul and Joyce Freear, Andrew Green, Margaret and David Humphries and Ian Johnson for their generous assistance in the making of this programme.