An explosion at a fertilizer plant near Waco, Texas,
Wednesday night has caused an unconfirmed
number of deaths and injured at least a hundred
people, leaving the factory a smouldering ruin and
causing major damage to surrounding buildings. The blast at West Fertilizer in West, a community
about 30 kilometres north of Waco, happened
shortly before 8 p.m. local time and could be heard
as far away as Waxahachie, 70 kilometres to the
north. “We have a tremendous amount of injuries,
probably over 100 injuries at this time,” said D.L.
Wilson, a trooper with the Texas Department of
Safety. “We do have confirmed fatalities. The number is not
current yet and it could go up by the minute,” he
said. Aerial footage showed
fires still smouldering 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. Tommy Muska, West's
mayor, said at a news conference three hours after
the explosion that he didn't yet know how many
people had been injured or killed. He said buildings
in a five-block radius from the plant were severely
damaged by the explosion. 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 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 Associated Press. 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 three kilometres south of town, her
husband told her what he'd seen: a huge fireball
that rose like "a mushroom cloud." Fires smouldering 2 hours after blast More than two hours after the blast, there were still
fires smouldering 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 Dallas's NBC
affiliate, WDFW, 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. 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 140 kilometres 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 70 kilometres north of West
in Waxahachie, told the station that he and his wife
heard what sounded like a thunderclap. 'It sounded like 3 bombs' Lydia Zimmerman, told KWTX that she, her husband
and daughter were in their garden in Bynum, 20
kilometres 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 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, which can be
used for both fertilizer and explosives. The
explosion came 10 days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S., and raised fears at the time it was
linked. A 2006 report blamed the blast on
negligence. With files from CBC News © The Associated Press, 2013 MobileFacebook PodcastsTwitter Alerts Newsletter

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What is with the US...only days back it was the Boston bomblast issue and now this...?!