PLAYING
WITH FIRE
ambulance crews readied themselves to respond to calls for help.
“No explosions like this ever
fit into the drills or anything like
that,” Smith said, his face marked
by cuts from glass and debris
that hit him during the explosion.
“It never crossed our minds.”
FLEE OR FIGHT
Texas — a state famous for its
size and stature — claims an outsize share of the country’s industrial accidents.
As of May 2012, the state held
1,827 facilities deemed at risk of
toxic or flammable chemical accidents, about one-tenth of all
those in the nation, according to
data from the EPA’s Risk Management Program as tabulated
by the Right-to-Know Network,
a non-profit government watchdog. Yet the state was responsible for nearly 50 percent of the
evacuations and property damage costs caused by accidents at
such plants over the previous five
years, according to a Huffington
Post review of the data.
The owners of industrial facilities like West Fertilizer are
required by state and federal law
to notify local and state authorities when dangerous compounds
HUFFINGTON
04.28.13
“MY HEART IS BROKEN
WITH GRIEF ...”
are on site, so that emergency
coordinators can incorporate the
hazards into response plans. But
in the case of small towns such as
West -- population 2,807 -- fire
and emergency medical crews are
generally of the volunteer variety, and resources can be scarce.
Even the best-prepared emergency response crews can face stark
choices about how to approach
dangerous situations.
In 2009, a spark from a welder’s torch ignited a fire that quickly consumed El Dorado Chemical
Co., near the city of Bryan, Texas,
sending billowing clouds of toxic
smoke into the atmosphere. El
Dorado also stored large quantities of ammonium nitrate.
Chuck Frazier, the emergency
management coordinator for Brazos County, which includes Bryan, said first responders quickly
made the decision to evacuate
the surrounding area rather than
stay and fight the fire. The risk
of failing to contain the blaze
was too great, they determined.
Authorities ordered more than
60,000 local residents to evacuate, and dozens were admitted to