Explosion In TX Hundreds Injured!
Lets keep an eye on this one…
By Regina Dennis
WEST, Texas (Reuters) – A fiery explosion ripped through a fertilizer plant near Waco, Texas, on Wednesday night and damaged or destroyed numerous buildings including a school and nursing home, and hundreds of people were likely injured in the blast, authorities said.
CNN reported two fatalities, but that could not be immediately confirmed.
The blast, apparently preceded by a fire at the plant, was reported at about 8 p.m. CDT (0100 GMT on Thursday) in West, a town of some 2,700 people about 80 miles south of Dallas and 20 miles north of Waco.
“It’s a lot of devastation. I’ve never seen anything like this,” said McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara. “It looks like a war zone with all the debris.”
A spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, D.L. Wilson, told Reuters the blast had probably caused “hundreds of casualties” and damaged many homes but had no word on fatalities. He added that a nearby nursing home had collapsed from the explosion and that people were believed trapped inside.
McNamara said the nursing home and much of the center of town had been evacuated, and that residences near the explosion had been leveled.
There was no immediate official word on what sparked the explosion as emergency personnel assisted victims and doused the flames. U.S. Representative Bill Flores, whose district includes West, said he doubted any foul play was involved.
“I would not expect sabotage by any stretch of the imagination,” he told CNN.
A Texas public safety dispatcher in Waco told Reuters that an initial explosion was followed by two smaller blasts, all of which erupted after a fire at the plant.
He said there was concern that a “second silo” at the plant could explode and that authorities were scrambling to evacuate the area around the facility.
Mayor Tommy Muska said in an interview on CNN that 60 to 80 homes around the plant were flattened.
