Almost all Texas fertilizer plants like the one that exploded nearly three years ago in West - killing 15 people and injuring hundreds - are within a quarter-mile of a residence and little has been done to protect the public, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board says in a report to be released Thursday. While the precise cause of the blast will probably never be known, the CSB's 265-page final report describes in painstaking detail a host of failures by the West Fertilizer Company, the government, fire officials, insurance companies and others that allowed tens of thousands of pounds of ammonium nitrate to detonate. ... Fire erupted at West Fertilizer after 7 p.m. on April 17, 2013. Members of the West Volunteer Fire Department rushed to the scene, unaware of the explosive danger of ammonium nitrate and poorly trained to handle a complex hazardous materials incident, the CSB found.
Instead, firefighters focused on cooling tanks of anhydrous ammonia, which could have released a poisonous cloud had they ruptured. The report notes that volunteer fire departments across the state often receive little training and conflicting information about how to respond to such incidents.