West blast reveals emergency planning weaknesses
Last edited Mon May 20, 2013, 07:28 AM - Edit history (1)
By J.B. SMITH jbsmith@wacotrib.com
The stockpile of ammonium nitrate at West Fertilizer Co. was well known to farmers and firefighters around West. The explosive potential of that fertilizer was well known to experts for decades, codified in national fire standards.
But nowhere in the years before the April 17 explosion that ravaged West were the dangers of that stockpile reported in local emergency plans.
The explosion that killed 15 people and wrecked 37 blocks has revealed gaps in the federally mandated system for planning for hazardous materials incidents.
It’s a system that tends to pass the burden of identifying and mitigating chemical hazards to the lowest jurisdictional level, often resource-poor volunteer fire departments such as West’s.
The Emergency Planning Right-to-Know Act of 1986 requires “community response plans” to identify chemical hazards in each county, modeling how a disaster would affect nearby populations.
A “Local Emergency Planning Committee” in each county is supposed to review the plan yearly and educate the public about the hazards.
McLennan County does have a volunteer LEPC — though it hasn’t met since 2011 — and it has a plan for hazardous materials, rolled into an all-purpose disaster plan.
But that plan has little information about site-specific chemical risks around the county or their impact.
Among the hundreds of pages of the McLennan County Emergency Plan is a passing mention of potential dangers at the West Fertilizer Co., but it refers only to tanks of anhydrous ammonia, which ended up surviving the ammonium nitrate explosion.
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weaknesses/article_d9156421-3533-560f-b60c-caca21a77db6.html
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