A Saginaw River Disaster

On September 16, 1990, Great Lakes tanker Jupiter was unloading gasoline at a pier in Bay City, Michigan, on the Saginaw River. Then disaster struck. Pulled from the pier by the suction of another ship’s passage, Jupiter began leaking gasoline from the unloading hoses. A spark ignited the gasoline. Jupiter exploded.

When the River Burned: The Untold Story of the Jupiter Explosion, by Joey Oliver, tells what followed. It describes the accident as it developed, the firefighting effort, the aftermath of the explosion, and the resulting changes.

Oliver begins by putting Bay City and the Saginaw River in a historical context. He shows how the Bay City area was settled, its early economy (largely timber in the nineteenth century), and its industrial development into a major Great Lakes harbor and shipbuilding center. This includes a telling of how chemical industries replaced timber as the region’s economic mainstay and discussion of the environmental impact logging and chemical plants had on the Saginaw River watershed.

Then he explores the accident, showing how the disaster resulted from a cumulative set of minor factors. A passing ship going too fast, a deteriorated wharf at which Jupiter was anchored, and Jupiter’s crew failing to stop unloading operations as the other ship passed. Individually each was harmless. Combined, the results proved catastrophic. The pier failed, pulling Jupiter into the river and rupturing the connection between the ship's still-running pumps and the shoreside tanks she was loading.

Oliver highlights the responses to the incident. Jupiter’s and the Coast Guard responded quickly, and only one life was lost. But the Bay City fire department was unprepared to handle an eruption of that magnitude. The fire raged until a commercial firefighting company extinguished it three days later.

Moreover, the response created an environmental problem. The firefighting foam used to contain and quench the gasoline contained a “forever chemical” with deadly environmental effects. Worse, no one then was aware of the long-term dangers of the foam.

As Oliver shows, there was also positive fallout from the worst Great Lakes disaster of the last 50 years. The Coast Guard investigation yielded several lessons learned. Several were implemented, reducing the chances of a repetition of the accident—not just at Bay City, but at all US ports.

When the River Burned is a fascinating study of the interconnectedness of complex systems, one with an eye to the ripple effects that can augment a disaster and illustrates the importance of careful attention to detail for shipping and shoreside operations.

“When the River Burned: The Untold Story of the Jupiter Explosion,” by Joey Oliver, Michigan State University Press, October 2026, 140 pages, $29.95 (Paperback), $29.95 (E-book)

This review was written by Mark Lardas, who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.