From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/25/west-texas-explosion-deadly-profit-safety
Poor regulation of the West Fertilizer plant likely contributed to 15 deaths – just as 13 US workers die at their jobs every single day
Amy Goodman
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 25 April 2013
The Boston Marathon bombing and its aftermath has dominated the nation’s headlines. Yet, another series of explosions that happened two days later and took four times the number of lives, has gotten a fraction of the coverage. It was the worst industrial accident in years. But to call it an accident ignores that it was preventable, and was quite possibly a crime, as is common with so many dangerous workplaces.
The first call came in to the 911 dispatcher at 7.29pm on Wednesday 17 April. A woman at a playground noticed a fire across the railroad tracks, at the West Fertilizer Co facility, in the small town of West, Texas, near Waco. The local volunteer fire department was mobilized. Less than 25 minutes later, a massive explosion leveled the plant, sending shock waves, debris and fire across West, ultimately killing 15 people, among them a local EMT, eight volunteer firefighters and a Dallas fire captain who was visiting his sons and joined the firefighting effort.
The call came over the emergency radio system:
“We need every ambulance we can get at this point. A bomb just went off inside here. It’s pretty bad. We’ve got a lot of firemen down.”
Another call followed, with moaning in the background:
“The rest home has been seriously damaged. We have many people down. Please respond.”
A mushroom cloud climbed high into the sky. The explosion registered 2.1 on the Richter scale, the same as a small earthquake. 911 calls flooded in, with people reporting a bomb, many injured and others engulfed in a toxic cloud. Sixty to 80 houses were leveled.
One week later, the fires are out, most of the funerals have been held, but major questions remain unanswered. A team of up to 70 investigators is probing the source of the explosion. Reuters reported last Saturday that the plant had on site 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate. This is 1,350 times the amount that would require a facility to self-report its stockpile to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Ammonium nitrate is a fertilizer used in industrial farming worldwide, and is stable when properly stored. It can be highly explosive when ignited, especially when mixed with fuel, as Timothy McVeigh demonstrated with the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. West Fertilizer Co never reported its ammonium nitrate to DHS.
Continue reading at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/25/west-texas-explosion-deadly-profit-safety
