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By JOHN L. MONE and BETSY BLANEY | Associated Press – 18 mins ago
Associated Press/Waco Tribune Herald, Rod Aydelotte - Emergency workers assist an elderly person at a staging area at a local school stadium Wednesday, April 17, 2013, in West, Texas. An explosion Wednesday night at a fertilizer plant near Waco sent flames shooting high into the night sky, leaving the factory a smoldering ruin, causing major damage at nearby buildings and injuring numerous people. (AP Photo/Waco Tribune Herald, Rod Aydelotte)
WEST, Texas (AP) — An explosion at a fertilizer plant near Waco Wednesday night injured dozens of people and sent flames shooting high into the night sky, leaving the factory a smoldering ruin and causing major damage to surrounding buildings.
The blast at West Fertilizer in West, a community about 20 miles north of Waco, happened shortly before 8 p.m. and could be heard as far away as Waxahachie, 45 miles to the north.
There was no immediate word from officials about fatalities or the severity of the explosion, as Texas Gov. Rick Perry said state officials were also waiting for details about the extent of the damage.
"We are monitoring developments and gathering information as details continue to emerge about this incident," Perry said in a statement. "We have also mobilized state resources to help local authorities. Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of West, and the first responders on the scene."
But aerial footage showed fires still smoldering in the ruins of the plant and in several surrounding buildings, and people being treated for injuries on the flood-lit local football field, which had been turned into a staging area for emergency responders.
Debby Marak told The Associated Press that when she finished teaching her religion class Wednesday night, she noticed a lot of smoke in the area across town near the plant, which is near a nursing home. She said she drove over to see what was happening, and that when she got there, two boys came running toward her screaming that the authorities ordered everyone out because the plant was going to explode.
She said she drove about a block when the blast happened.
"It was like being in a tornado," Marak, 58, said by phone. "Stuff was flying everywhere. It blew out my windshield."
"It was like the whole earth shook."
She drove 10 blocks and called her husband and asked him to come get her. When they got to their home about 2 miles south of town, her husband told her what he'd seen: a huge fireball that rose like "a mushroom cloud."
More than two hours after the blast, there were still fires smoldering in what was left of the plant and in others burning nearby. The roof of what appeared to be a housing complex of some kind had collapsed. In aerial footage from NBC's Dallas-Fort Worth affiliate, KXAS, dozens of emergency vehicles could be seen amassed at the scene. Entry into West was slow-going, as the roads were jammed with emergency vehicles rushing in to help out.
Authorities set up a staging area on the local high school's football field, which was lit up with floodlights. Ambulances and several dozen injured people could be seen being taken away or seated in wheelchairs as they are treated and await transport.
Department of Public Safety troopers were using their squad cars to transport those injured by the blast and fire at the plant in West, a community north of Waco, Gayle Scarbrough, a spokeswoman for the department's Waco office, told television station KWTX. She said six helicopters were also en route to help out.
Glenn A. Robinson, the chief executive of Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center in Waco, told CNN that his hospital had received 66 injured people for treatment, including 38 who were seriously hurt. He said the injuries included blast injuries, orthopedic injuries, large wounds and a lot of lacerations and cuts. The hospital has set up a hotline for families of the victims to get information, he said.
Robinson did not immediately return messages from the AP.
American Red Cross crews from across Texas were being sent to the site, the organization said. Red Cross spokeswoman Anita Foster said the group was working with emergency management officials in West to find a safe shelter for residents displaced from their homes. She said teams from Austin to Dallas and elsewhere are being sent to the community north of Waco.
A West Fire Department dispatcher said any casualties would be transported to hospitals in Waco, which is about 90 miles north of Austin.
The explosion knocked out power to many area customers and could be heard and felt for miles around.
Brad Smith, who lives 45 miles north of West in Waxahachie, told the station that he and his wife heard what sounded like a thunderclap.
Lydia Zimmerman, told KWTX that she, her husband and daughter were in their garden in Bynum, 13 miles from West, when they heard multiple blasts.
"It sounded like three bombs going off very close to us," she said.
Rafael Abreu, a geophysicist with National Earthquake Information Center of the U.S. Geological Survey, said the explosion did not register on a seismograph because most of the blast's energy dissipated in the atmosphere.
In 2001, an explosion at a chemical plant killed 31 people and injured more than 2,000 in Toulouse, France. The blast occurred in a hangar containing 300 tons of ammonium nitrate, which can be used for both fertilizer and explosives. The explosion came 10 days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S., and raised fears at the time it was linked. A 2006 report blamed the blast on negligence.
An elderly person is assisted at a staging area at a local school stadium following an explosion at a fertilizer plant Wednesday, April 17, 2013, in West, Texas. An explosion at a fertilizer plant near Waco caused numerous injuries and sent flames shooting high into the night sky on Wednesday. (AP Photo/ Waco Tribune Herald, Rod Aydelotte)
Elderly persons from a nearby nursing home are triaged in a parking lot before being moved to a school stadium following a fertilizer plant explosion Wednesday, April 17, 2013, in West, Texas. The explosion near Waco Wednesday night injured dozens of people and sent flames shooting high into the night sky, leaving the factory a smoldering ruin and causing major damage to surrounding buildings. (AP Photo/Waco Tribune Herald, Rod Aydelotte)
Persons are seen pushing wheel chairs in front of a damaged nursing home following an explosion at a nearby fertilizer plant Wednesday, April 17, 2013, in West, Texas. An explosion at a fertilizer plant near Waco caused numerous injuries and sent flames shooting high into the night sky on Wednesday.(AP Photo/ Waco Tribune Herald, Rod Aydelotte)
Emergency workers evacuate elderly from a damaged nursing home following an explosion at a fertilizer plant Wednesday, April 17, 2013, in West, Texas. An explosion at a fertilizer plant near Waco caused numerous injuries and sent flames shooting high into the night sky on Wednesday. (AP Photo/ Waco Tribune Herald, Rod Aydelotte)
The remains of a fertilizer plant burn after an explosion at the plant in the town of West, near Waco, Texas early April 18, 2013. The deadly explosion ripped through the fertilizer plant late on Wednesday, injuring more than 100 people, leveling dozens of homes and damaging other buildings including a school and nursing home, authorities said.
REUTERS/Mike Stone
Smoke rises as water is sprayed at the burning remains of a fertilizer plant after an explosion at the plant in the town of West, near Waco, Texas early April 18, 2013. The deadly explosion ripped through the fertilizer plant late on Wednesday, injuring more than 100 people, leveling dozens of homes and damaging other buildings including a school and nursing home, authorities said. REUTERS/Mike Stone
Vehicles are seen near the remains of a fertilizer plant burning after an explosion at the plant in the town of West, near Waco, Texas early April 18, 2013. The deadly explosion ripped through the fertilizer plant late on Wednesday, injuring more than 100 people, leveling dozens of homes and damaging other buildings including a school and nursing home, authorities said.
REUTERS/Mike Stone
Vehicles are seen near the remains of a fertilizer plant burning after an explosion at the plant in the town of West, near Waco, Texas early April 18, 2013. The deadly explosion ripped through the fertilizer plant late on Wednesday, injuring more than 100 people, leveling dozens of homes and damaging other buildings including a school and nursing home, authorities said. REUTERS/Mike Stone
The remains of a fertilizer plant burn after an explosion at the plant in the town of West, near Waco, Texas early April 18, 2013. The deadly explosion ripped through the fertilizer plant late on Wednesday, injuring more than 100 people, leveling dozens of homes and damaging other buildings including a school and nursing home, authorities said.
REUTERS/Mike Stone
Debris is seen after an explosion at a fertilizer plant burn in the town of West, near Waco, Texas early April 18, 2013. The deadly explosion ripped through the fertilizer plant late on Wednesday,
injuring more than 100 people, leveling dozens of homes and damaging other buildings including a school and nursing home, authorities said.
REUTERS/Mike Stone
A damaged vehicle is seen after an explosion at a fertilizer plant in the town of West, near Waco, Texas early April 18, 2013. The deadly explosion ripped through the fertilizer plant late on Wednesday, injuring more than 100 people, leveling dozens of homes and damaging other buildings including a school and nursing home, authorities said.
REUTERS/Mike Stone
Texas explosion: a blast, and then the town of West disappeared
Daylight revealed a landscape wrapped in acrid smoke and strewn with the shattered remains. Peter Foster reports from West, Texas.
Firefighters conduct a search and rescue operation at an apartment destroyed by an explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas. Photo: AP
By Peter Foster, in West, and Alex Spillius
9:42PM BST 18 Apr 2013
It started with a call to the local fire brigade at 7.30pm: a small fire at the West Fertiliser Co on the edge of town.
The blaze grew and a dozen or more firemen from the local volunteer force soon arrived.
Among the 2,800 people of the central Texan town of West, word spread fast. Many could see the fire, but some thought little of it.
Others were more curious and drove to see what was going on as dusk approached on Wednesday night. Among them was Debby Marak. Having finished teaching her religion class, she was just reaching the plant off the Interstate 35, when two boys came towards her screaming that the police were saying everybody had to get out because the plant was about to blow.
Elsewhere, others were filming the blaze on cameras and phones, including a father who sat in his car with his daughter, on open ground about half a mile away, with the engine running.
Just as he was he was fiddling with camera and saying "it should flash", the boom came.
[SUP]
Picture: EPA/LARRY W. SMITH[/SUP] "Dad, I can't hear. Dad, get out of here,"his daughter screamed on footage seen around the world. "Cover your ears! Oh God," he responds, as the camera is dropped. "It was like a tornado," recalled Mrs Marak. "Stuff was flying everywhere. It blew out my windshield. It was like the whole earth shook."
The US Geological Survey indeed recorded a 2.1 seismic tremor. The reverberations were felt 65 miles away in Dallas. Police said the plant stored large amounts of anhydrous ammonia, the common chemical fertiliser, for sale to farmers. Extremely combustible at high temperatures, the working assumption is that the fire had set off the chemical blast, which through up a mushroom cloud compared by one officer to a nuclear explosion.
Sgt William Swanton of the Waco police department said there was no indication that the blast, which left behind a yawning crater, was anything other than an industrial accident.
As of Thursday night, it was though between five and 15 people had perished, with 160 injured, suffering lacerations, burns and broken bones.
Among the dead were several fireman who would have been close to the blaze when it erupted. "We risk our lives everyday. Those firefighters knew what they were going into," Sgt Swanton said, a volunteer fire officer himself. "They went in there to save lives, and that's what they did. A few of them lost their lives in doing so."
[SUP]
Picture: AP[/SUP]
Members of the public also rushed to the scene, particularly to a nursing home near the plant, where residents had been evacuated before the blast, and stood dazed on the forecourt, some on stretchers, some in wheelchairs. Part of the building had collapsed. Among the first on the scene was Cynthia Urbanovski, 63, a retired nurse who drove from her farm on the outskirts of the town to help.
"The people were shaking and covered in blood," said Mrs Urbanovski, who like many people in West is of Czech descent. "We were doing everything we could to hold people together until they were transferred to hospitals."
[SUP]
Picture: AP[/SUP]
The triage centre was set up in the local community centre, after being pulled back further from the blazing plant as the emergency services raised concerns about the possibility of chemical leaks.
"The policeman let me through the cordon and I arrived to find one of our local parademics need a lift - her ambulance had been totally destroyed in the blast. I drove her back and we started work."
Daylight revealed a landscape wrapped in acrid smoke and strewn with the shattered remains. Up to 75 homes were damaged, some obliterated; the force of the explosion sheared away the front of an apartment building, leaving behind twisted beams, shattered windows and heaps of broken wood. Cars were battered as if a tornado had spun through town.
On a cold, cloudy day, the area most affected by the blast remained cordoned off as fire and rescue services continued to comb the wreckage in a search and rescue mission that still clung to the hope of find survivors.
At the Stockyard Cafe, there were piles of donations, including clothes, food, bottled drinks and nappies donated by local people and businesses who had sprung into action to assist those evacuated from their homes and still not allowed to return by police on Thursday evening.
On West's low key high street, the pavements were littered with glass from broken shopfront windows. Mary Galvan became tearful as she swept up shattered glass from in front of the West Thrift Shop she manages for the West Area Ministerial Alliance.
"Nothing like this has ever happened," she said. "It is just terrifying."
The explosion happened two days before the 20th anniversary of the conflagration in nearby Waco that engulfed a compound inhabited by David Koresh and his followers in the Branch Davidian sect. The area now has another disaster to its name. But Sgt Swanton vowed the farming community would pull through.
"This is a very tight knit, family-oriented community. Talk about leaning on each other's shoulder - they are absolutely doing that," he said.
12 bodies recovered from Texas fertilizer plant explosion; 200 injured
From ASSOCIATED PRESS
Last Updated: 10:34 AM, April 19, 2013
Posted: 10:32 AM, April 19, 2013
Smoke still rises from the rubble of a house next to the fertilizer plant that exploded in West, Texas.
WEST, Texas — The bodies of 12 people have been recovered after an enormous Texas fertilizer plant explosion that demolished surrounding neighborhoods for blocks and left about 200 other people injured, authorities said Friday.
Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Jason Reyes said it was "with a heavy heart" that he confirmed 12 bodies had been pulled from the area of the plant explosion in West, about 20 miles north of Waco.
Even before investigators released a confirmed number of fatalities, the names of the dead were becoming known in the town of 2,800 and a small group of firefighters and other first responders who may have rushed toward the plant to battle a pre-explosion blaze was believed to be among them.
MORE PHOTOS: TEXAS FERTILIZER PLANT EXPLOSION
Reyes said he could not confirm Friday how many of those killed were first responders.
Rescue crews spent much of the day after Wednesday night's blast searching the town for survivors, and Reyes said those efforts were ongoing. He said authorities had searched and cleared 150 buildings by Friday morning and still had another 25 to examine.
The mourning already had begun at a service at St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church the previous night.
"We know everyone that was there first, in the beginning," said Christina Rodarte, 46, who has lived in West for 27 years. "There's no words for it. It is a small community, and everyone knows the first responders, because anytime there's anything going on, the fire department is right there, all volunteer."
One victim Rodarte knew and whose name was released was Kenny Harris, a 52-year-old captain in the Dallas Fire Department who lived south of West. He was off duty at the time but responded to the fire to help, according to a statement from the city of Dallas.
With search and rescue efforts continuing, it was clear the town's landscape was going to be changed forever by the four-to-five block radius leveled by the blast. An apartment complex was badly shattered, a school set ablaze, and a nursing home was left in ruins.
Residents were kept out of a large swath of West, where search and rescue teams continued to pick through the rubble. Some with permission made forays closer to the destruction and came back stunned, and it was possible other residents would be allowed to retrieve some personal belongings Friday, emergency workers said.
Garage doors were ripped off homes. Fans hung askew from twisted porches. At West Intermediate School, which was close to the blast site, all of the building's windows were blown out, as well as the cafeteria.
"I had an expectation of what I would see, but what I saw went beyond my expectations in a bad way," said Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott after his visit. "It is very disturbing to see the site.
Fifteen years ago, Brenda Covey, 46, lived in the now-leveled apartment complex across the street from the plant.
On Thursday, she learned that two men she knew, both volunteer firefighters, had perished. Word of one came from her landlord because they live in the same complex in nearby Hillsboro. The other was the best man at her nephew's wedding.
"Word gets around quick in a small town," said Covey, who spent her whole life living in and around West.
Firefighter Darryl Hall, from Thorndale, about 50 miles away from West, was one of the rescue workers helping with the house to house search.
"People's lives are devastated here. It's hard to imagine," Hall said.
The explosion apparently was touched off by a fire, but it remained unclear what sparked the blaze. A team from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives still had not been able to begin investigating the scene Thursday because it remained unsafe, agency spokeswoman Franceska Perot said.
The West Fertilizer Co. facility stores and distributes anhydrous ammonia, a fertilizer that can be directly injected into soil, and a blender and mixer of other fertilizers.
Records reviewed by The Associated Press show the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration fined West Fertilizer $10,000 last summer for safety violations that included planning to transport anhydrous ammonia without a security plan. An inspector also found the plant's ammonia tanks weren't properly labeled.
The government accepted $5,250 after the company took what it described as corrective actions, the records show. It is not unusual for companies to negotiate lower fines with regulators.
In a risk-management plan filed with the Environmental Protection Agency about a year earlier, the company said it was not handling flammable materials and did not have sprinklers, water-deluge systems, blast walls, fire walls or other safety mechanisms in place at the plant.
State officials require all facilities that handle anhydrous ammonia to have sprinklers and other safety measures because it is a flammable substance, according to Mike Wilson, head of air permitting for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
But inspectors would not necessarily check for such mechanisms, and it's not known whether they did when the West plant was last inspected in 2006, said Ramiro Garcia, head of enforcement and compliance.
That inspection followed a complaint about a strong ammonia smell, which the company resolved by obtaining a new permit, said the commission's executive director Zak Covar. He said no other complaints had been filed with the state since then, so there haven't been additional inspections.
The Rev. Ed Karasek told the hundreds gathered at Thursday's church service that the community needed time to heal.
"I know that every one of us is in shock," Karasek said. "We don't know what to think."
"Our town of West will never be the same, but we will persevere."
