Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, April 7, 1926, lightning strikes an oil storage tank in San Luis Obispo, California,

and set off a series of explosions and fires.

We'll get into the details here, but basically this resulted in what can best be described as a river of fire

flowing several miles to the ocean, incredibly destructive and this at a time when this region was one of the busiest

oil areas in the world. So let's talk about what came to be known as the

1926 tank fire, California's oil industry, the ecological effect, and a defining relatively early industrial disaster.

So here to discuss, as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello, Jody.

Hey there.

I just happened to have driven past through San Luis Obispo a couple weeks ago,

and I knew we were going to do this episode, so I was just sort of thinking about that.

And I know this is contentious, what I'm about to say, like Central California.

It's, you know, south of, I think, the Central California coast north of obviously Los Angeles north of

Santa Barbara obviously like this is oil country I'll just say it's an interesting

thing to me that like the couple times I've been to Santa Barbara which is like

one of most beautiful places in the world and totally I feel like and then you look out

over the ocean and there's all these oil rigs you know dotting the water and

I've always been like gosh this is like the perfect view and then

four son of our birds have to live in staring at oil but you're a nimbee and it's not

even your backyard. Exactly, exactly.

...