Mark in Texas History: 89 years since New London school explosion killed 311

NEW LONDON, Texas (KLTV) - Wednesday marked 89 years since a gas explosion killed 311 students and teachers at the New London School.

The New London explosion is the deadliest school disaster in the nation’s history. It was blamed on a natural gas leak beneath the building.

“I was looking across there at the school and I was thinking, those kids were coming in, they were laughing, they were playing. They were getting excited about a county meeting and a day off. And the next day, they were gone,” a museum representative said. “The attention it is getting even now, through the media, through our website. We had two groups in here recently from England.”

Within weeks of the disaster, the Texas Legislature passed a law requiring an odor be added to natural gas.

“A lot of things changed after the school explosion like putting in the malodor, so you can smell natural gas. There were a lot of architectural changes that were made,” the representative said. “Some of the people at the museum have gone and talked to the national architectural association; there were a lot of changes that took place.”

The event is the third-deadliest disaster in the history of Texas, after the 1900 Galveston Hurricane and the 1947 Texas City disaster.

A museum memorializing the tragedy is located on Main Street in New London. It is open Monday through Saturday. In the middle of the road is a historical marker, which was erected in 1989. Behind that is a cenotaph commemorating the victims of the explosion. It has names of every victim on it.

The historical marker is located at 690 Main Street in Overton.