In the evening of 30 May 1976, a series of explosions caused by the release of a large quantity of gasoline into an underground sewer tore through a block of houses in Pfaffenthal, a district of Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. Three residents were killed, including a four-year-old child, and between 20 and 25 people were injured. The explosion, labelled by Tageblatt at the time as "the worst disaster since the end of the war", further destroyed or caused irreparable damage to around 20 houses, rendering nearly 100 people homeless. In 1982, three people were held responsible for the explosion by Luxembourg's court of appeals, and sentenced to pay fines and damages to implicated insurance companies. A social housing development was built in place of the demolished block; despite promises of rapid reconstruction by city authorities, this was only completed in 1986, a decade after the incident.
Background
Pfaffenthal is one of 24 districts of Luxembourg City, situated in a narrow part of the Alzette valley, downstream from Clausen and below the Ville-Haute, the city's old town. Historically an important point of passage for people going up to the gates of what was then a fortress city, it became densely populated, concentrating up to 16% of the city's entire population as of 1806. Pfaffenthal entered into decline starting with the dismantling of the fortress in the 1870s and the construction of the Côte d'Eich, a road leading up to the Ville-Haute from the north that bypassed it. The part of the district located on the left bank of the Alzette, around the Béinchen bridge, became known as a working-class neighbourhood with an important immigrant population drawn by affordable housing. Before the Second World War, the district was home to around 4,600 residents; this number declined in the decades following the war, down to about 1,500 in the 1970s and 1980s. As of 1974, 41% of Pfaffenthal residents were immigrants, compared to 24% for the city as a whole, and Portuguese immigrants in particular made up a sizeable proportion of the neighbourhood's population. All the while, living conditions had improved little since the beginning of the century; homes were often small and cramped, with extremely basic amenities. Robert Conrad, a former head of the city's housing department, later described these conditions as "the worst in the entire city" and "almost like in the Middle Ages". For much of the 20th century, the City pursued a hygienist policy in the neighbourhood, buying up and demolishing a number of unsanitary homes. Consequently, part of the block where the explosion would take place, located between the Alzette, the Béinchen bridge, Rue Laurent Menager and Rue du Pont, close to where the Pfaffenthal Panoramic Elevator stands today, already stood vacant. In January 1976, just four months before the explosions, the Luxembourg City Communal Council approved a plan for the block's restoration, which would have involved the preservation of existing buildings and the creation of a traffic-calmed street, a "revolutionary idea" at the time. Gas explosions and fires were not uncommon in the neighbourhood. On 21 September 1973, for instance, in the courtyard of a building on Rue Laurent Menager, a man's attempt at connecting a gas cylinder, together with the presence of candles used for light due to the lack of electricity in many homes, triggered a strong explosion which injured four and caused a large fire. It was reportedly the eighth fire within three years at the time.
Explosion
On 30 May 1976, at 21:20, residents at 45, Rue Laurent Menager noticed a suspicious gas smell that prompted them to call the city's gasworks. At 21:30, a member of the gasworks emergency personnel arrived at the scene, and determined that the smell could not have been coming from the city gasworks, as pipes were intact. Shortly thereafter, around 21:40, a first explosion occurred at number 3, Rue du Pont, and the adjacent Café du Pont. The house at number 3 collapsed almost entirely, killing a woman and a child who were buried under the rubble, with a man left hanging by a window, his legs trapped by rubble. This first explosion caused many residents to run out of their homes, which, alongside the fact that many others had been out at neighbourhood cafés, likely limited the death toll. Emergency services, which were alerted at 21:56, rushed to the scene, but around 22:10, as the man stuck in the window was being rescued, a second explosion took place, described as "far more devastating" than the first and which sent several manhole covers flying into the air. Using a megaphone, a fire chief urged people to evacuate the area, likely preventing further victims. In total, about a half dozen explosions, likely caused by fire interacting with gas, followed the first one. Over 100 emergency personnel attended the scene, including paramedics with a "fleet of ambulances", professional fire brigades, Grand Ducal Police, Grand Ducal Gendarmerie, Luxembourg Armed Forces, Red Cross and Protection Civile personnel, with teams from the city aided by backup from Lintgen, Mamer and Bettembourg. Some firemen were in service for as long as 29 straight hours to attend the scene. As the smell of gas could be sensed as far downstream as Eich and Weimerskirch, the supply was cut in a number of surrounding streets and a light-foam extract was injected into shafts in order to prevent further explosions. In the late hours of the night, Luxembourg City mayor Colette Flesch and Internal Affairs minister Jos Wohlfart arrived at the scene to assess the extent of the explosions. The next day, in an official statement to the communal council and after having promised speedy compensation for victims, Flesch described the event as "one of the worst catastrophes in peacetime".
Casualties and aftermath
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