It's a small town.
Many here including Markos Moulitsas have condemned what they considered the inadequacies of the zoning laws in West, Texas prior to the destructive explosion a week ago. Others speculated that the town might have grown up around the factory, rather than the factory moving into the town. A story in today's Fort Worth Star Telegram confirms this.
WEST -- The firefighters were volunteers, charged with protecting a city of 2,800.
But, although the city was tiny, it had grown right up against a plant that stored hazardous chemicals.
When that plant, which sat just outside the West city limits, caught fire Wednesday night, some 16 or 17 firefighters rushed in.
Despite their volunteer status, West Mayor Tommy Muska said, the men were trained to handle the situation. "Cody Dragoo, the foreman out at the plant, was a fireman," said Muska, himself one of the city's 29 firefighters. "He knew that plant better than anybody. He knew the dangers. He knew the chemicals there. Did we realize it could cause such an explosion? Yes, we knew it was volatile."
Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/...
Still another story -- available around the web as well as at the Star Telegram -- suggests that
Texas Governor Rick Perry thinks the state had done everything it needed to do to prevent this explosion. In point of fact the federal authorities had also inspected the plant recently -- but they weren't looking for explosives.
Also Monday, Bryan Shaw, chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said he did not believe that more environmental regulations would have prevented the blast.
Shaw told the AP that he believes the final investigation will show that anhydrous ammonia, which his agency regulates and the plant stored, was not responsible for the explosion. Shaw's agency last inspected the fertilizer plant in 2006 after receiving a complaint about odor. Agency leaders have said they have not received any other complaints.
Yet over the years, the fertilizer company was fined and cited for violations by federal and state agencies. Last summer, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration assessed a $10,000 fine against West Fertilizer for improperly labeling storage tanks and preparing to transfer chemicals without a security plan. The company paid $5,250 after reporting that it had corrected the problems. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also cited the plant for not having an up-to-date risk management plan. That problem was also resolved, and the company submitted a new plan in 2011.
Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/...
Now the town has
no potable water ...
...because shockwaves from that explosion collapsed water lines underground in the town of about 2,800 people. West covers about 1.6 square miles in McLellan County.
WEST, Texas—City officials warned that hundreds of residents here could be without water for at least a week or more because pipes and other utility infrastructure were "severely damaged" in last Wednesday’s deadly explosion at a fertilizer plant.
"At this time, there is no access to water," Steve Vanek, a West City Council member and deputy mayor, said at an afternoon press briefing here. He said the pipes for the city's water system ran near the site of the West Fertilizer Co., which was destroyed in the fire and subsequent explosion. He put the small number of residents in town who do have water on a "boil order," warning that officials aren't sure what environmental impact the explosion had on the city's water supply.
"We hope to know more later this week," he said.
People are being allowed back into their homes.
Students who normally attend the high school or middle school are going to class -- probably the rest of this year at least --
in a nearby town's formerly-vacant building, depending on donations for equipment and books to support their education.
The recovery, or what there will be of it, has started. It isn't over and won't be for a long time.
The announcement came as investigators began taking 3-D photos of a large crater at the site of the destroyed fertilizer plant as part of their efforts to determine the cause of the blast, which killed 14 and injured more than 200.
Kelly Kistner, an assistant state fire marshal, likened the investigation at the site to an “archaeological dig”—saying that officials combing the site for clues are slowly going through the site “layer by layer.”
“This is going to be a slow, methodical process,” Kistner told reporters at an afternoon briefing. He refused to put a timeline on when officials might be able to determine a cause for the fire and explosion, emphasizing again and again that the search for a cause would be “slow and methodical.”
“We’re just trying to get the job done and get it done correctly,” Kistner said. “We’re going to be here a long time.”
The plant, originally built at a distance from the town, had been surrounded by the growing town (a growing town in rural America is in and of itself an exception to the rule) in recent years.
State and local officials have warned residents that the city is unlikely to get back to normal anytime soon. “This is going to be a very long process,” Mayor Tommy Muska said Saturday.
As some residents were allowed back in to see their homes, dozens of insurance companies have descended on the region, setting up mobile offices and handing out business cards along Oak Street, the main drag in West’s downtown district.
Agents also have been spotted at the press conferences held by local officials at City Hall, just two blocks from the cordoned off neighborhood near the fertilizer plant. One agent, who declined to be named, said he was just trying to “gather as much information as I can for my clients.”
Investigators announced Sunday that they'd found the initial point of the blast. State investigators, federal investigators, who derive their authority from the same sources as the inspectors whose concerns about the plant had been resolved in '06 and
in '11.
More details here:
http://news.yahoo.com/...
Anhydrous ammonia is a common fertilizer in US agriculture. The major
hazard associated with it is the risk of inhalation -- and here is an incident, today, in which a person had to be taken to a hospital in Indiana as a result.
http://www.therepublic.com/...
The Guardian has more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
The National Safety Council considers the primary danger to be inhalation, based on this pdf:
www.nsc.org/news_resources/Resources/Documents/Anhydrous_Ammonia_Safety.pdf
Ammonium nitrate is another common fertilizer. Mixed with diesel, it's also the explosive Timothy McVeigh used.
Plants like the one in West can be found in many states.
Small towns like West frequently do not -- whether in Texas or other states -- have the kind of zoning laws taken for granted by residents of such urban environments as LA or Chicago, Dallas or Minneapolis, Memphis or Philadelphia, Charlotte or Portland, Seattle or San Francisco (perhaps especially the last of these, since the history of earthquakes and San Francisco have influenced tremendous portions of the city's building and maintenance regulations).
I think the best coverage of this incident, which the major networks are determined to bury under the criminal conduct of a couple of disaffected young men who decided to blow up one of the world's most famous footraces last week, may belong to somebody right here at Dkos: Catte Nappe.
http://www.dailykos.com/...