According to the report, reviewed by the Dallas Morning News, the company said its worst-case scenario would be a 10-minute release of ammonia gas that would kill or injure no one. The second-worst-case scenario, West Fertilizer said, would be a leaky hose, that would also cause no harm. The same report said the plant had no alarms, automatic shutoff system, firewall, or sprinkler system.
The Texas regulators had noted that West Fertilizer was 3,000 feet from a school and surrounded by populated areas.
The evening of the explosion, the Dallas Morning news editorialized about the sort of local zoning decisions that could lead to the kind of high-risk neighborhood created around the fertilizer plant in West. After first praising the organization, planning, and execution of first responders to this disaster, the editorial asked::
"So why didn't local
planners demonstrate an equal level of forethought and imagine what kind of
problems could arise when you place a middle school, a retirement complex,
apartments and houses next to a fertilizer plant with a 12,000-gallon tank
containing highly volatile chemical compounds?
"Someone needs to be called to account for the scores of deaths and injuries caused by this explosion". We cannot have people living and going to school next to sub-nuclear ticking time bombs."
Why Isn't it About
Homeland Security in West, Texas?
But of course we can, and we have, and we will go on doing so. This isn't Boston, this isn't about terrorists, and in the strange doublethink of post-9/11 America, this isn't even about homeland security.
The people who don't want dangerous work sites inspected are much the same cohort as those who don't want any limits on guns. And sometimes for the same reason. Sometimes carnage is good for business.
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