Fertilizer Plant Explodes in West, Texas

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A massive explosion at a fertilizer plant in the small Texas town of West left at least two people dead, sent dozens more seeking medical attention and prompted a widescale evacuation in the community of 2,600 people.

A video of the explosion can be viewed here

Is this looking like one of the lousier weeks for the US in recent memory or what?

Here's another link

Aggie wrote:

Link

Quote :

A massive explosion at a fertilizer plant in the small Texas town of West left at least two people dead, sent dozens more seeking medical attention and prompted a widescale evacuation in the community of 2,600 people.

A video of the explosion can be viewed here

Is this looking like one of the lousier weeks for the US in recent memory or what?

Bitch please. The week that Paul Bearer died was the worst week ever.

Aggie wrote:

A massive explosion at a fertilizer plant in the small Texas town of West left at least two people dead, sent dozens more seeking medical attention and prompted a widescale evacuation in the community of 2,600 people.

Cries of foul play nothwithstanding, there's a high chance that the accident is just that - a combination of indipendent factors. Crying terrorism by default is not going to help - if there were unsafe practices causing or contributing to the fire, they need to be inquired.

Did anyone hear about the explosion at the fertilizer plan in Toulose that killed 29 people? It was 10 days after 9/11, and a botched investigation concluded that it might or might not have been a disgruntled Muslim worker blowing himself up. I'm unconvinced - disgruntled Muslim workers are thick on the ground in France, no detonators were ever found, and the claim that the guy must have been a kamikaze because he was wearing two pairs of pants borders on ridicule.

The explosion is tame compared to the PEPCON one...

Seeing as fertilizer is really easy to blow up, I'm thinking that it didn't happen with help from anyone.

bleachedblackcat wrote:

Seeing as fertilizer is really easy to blow up, I'm thinking that it didn't happen with help from anyone.

I agree. Fertilizer is just chemical potential energy, so an accidental fire in a fertilizer plant would easily cause such a massive explosion. I'm doubting foul play until some actual evidence of it comes to light.

Three terrorists were sitting in a bar.

"I will set off bombs in a train station! It will be sooo much drama! The media will talk about it for weeks!"

"That's nothing! I will blow up the White House! America will tremble with fear!"

"Hah! Well I will blow up a fertilizer plant in West, Texas!"

"Come on! It had a population of 2,700 people! It was the biggest thing to go down in history!"

Bloomberg News: Texas Explosion Seen as Sign of Weak U.S. Oversight

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The Texas plant that was the scene of a deadly explosion this week was last inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 1985. The risk plan it filed with regulators listed no flammable chemicals. And it was cleared to hold many times the ammonium nitrate that was used in the Oklahoma City bombing.

snip.

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There are no federal rules mandating that such plants be located away from residential areas, and the current company safety plans aren’t always shared widely with residents nearby, said Paul Orum, an independent consultant who has authored reports on chemical safety for the Center for American Progress.

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In Texas, “I would be surprised if the risks present were communicated to those nearby,” he said in an interview.

Nice to know.

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The company has been cited for a series of violations over the past few years.

The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration on June 12 ordered the company to pay $5,250 for improperly planning to transport anhydrous ammonia. Violations included the use of unauthorized cargo tanks and failure to develop a transportation security plan, according to a PHMSA order that said the company had corrected the violations.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency conducted an inspection of the risk management plan at the plant in 2006, and found a number of deficiencies, including that the company was two years late filing the document. It fined the facility $2,300, and directed it to correct deficiencies, such as the failure to document hazards, EPA spokeswoman Alisha Johnson said in an e-mail.

Which the neighbors also didn't know about, and for which they got a couple slapsies on their wrists.

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Texas environmental regulators investigated the facility seven times between 2002 and 2007. An odor complaint in June 2006 triggered an inspection that resulted in a notice of violation for operating without a required air permit.

Snip.

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The facility, built in 1962, wasn’t required to have air permits until 2004 because it was “grandfathered” under state law, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. A series of subsequent inspections through 2007 found no concerns. No complaints were received in the past six years, the state agency said.

A risk management plan the company filed with the EPA said it “received, stored and distributed” 54,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia, which it didn’t characterize as flammable, according to a copy of the plan published on the Center for Effective Government website. The inventory of emergency and hazardous chemicals filed by the company with Texas regulators also didn’t list fire among the hazards for anhydrous ammonia.

I can't tell from this article whether the company pulled a fast one over on the state regulators or whether the state didn't require them to report this as a hazard.

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OSHA is now sending inspectors to the site of the blast to see if there were health or safety violations at the plant...

Given that Texas is a Right to Work state (read "We Have the Right to Fire Your Ass for Any Reason Whatsoever" state), I'll give you three guesses what the answer to that will be, and the first don't count.

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Safety advocates say the problems go well beyond the individual case, which is under investigation by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, EPA and OSHA.

The ratio of OSHA inspectors to workers has fallen over the past three decades, and there are now 2,200 for the country’s 8 million workplaces and 130 million workers. In Texas, OSHA conducted 4,448 inspections in the last fiscal year, a pace that would mean it would visit every workplace in 126 years, according to a report by the AFL-CIO.
AFL-CIO Comment

I doubt the Sequester has helped.

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The West fertilizer plant had only about seven employees, and “these kind of workplaces are not typically inspected by OSHA,” Peg Seminario, safety and health director of the labor federation, said in an interview. “What people don’t understand is how limited resources are to oversee workplace safety and health.”

Got it?

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Since the Bhopal chemical release in India in 1984 that killed thousands of people, environmental groups, unions and safety groups have been pushing the U.S. to tighten federal oversight of chemical production and storage facilities. While they pressed for such proposals after the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York, legislation they advocated never passed Congress. The EPA considered regulations but dropped that idea under President George W. Bush’s administration.

Great, another thing to thank that moron for.

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As a U.S. senator, Barack Obama teamed with New Jersey’s Frank Lautenberg to propose legislation tightening standards on chemical plants. That effort never succeeded and Obama made it a recurring theme in his 2008 presidential election bid.

It has been nixed so far by the lobbyists for the industry, and the Representatives who love their money.

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Lobbying groups for these plants say the risks are limited and they now face a panoply of regulations and oversight.

Yeah, right. What they really mean is they don't want to spend money on preventing these kinds of accidents. They have a responsibility to their shareholders to maximize profits, after all.

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Since Obama took office, the Homeland Security Department has taken steps to regulate the industry.

However...

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Rick Hind, legislative director of Greenpeace, said in an interview that those efforts haven’t gone far enough, because thousands of high-risk plants such as water-treatment facilities and many refineries are exempted.

To sum up: Don't count on the company that runs that dangerous industrial plant down the street to choose to operate safely. Don't count on the US Government to protect you or your property from them either because even if they are allowed to inspect and monitor the place, they may not have the resources to do it. You may be able to count on your state government to look out for you if you don't live in Texas.

(I highly recommend you all to go read the whole article.)