Cause of Texas plant fire still a mystery as death toll set to rise

Skeletons of buildings, gutted, with debris hanging off them; doors ripped off homes with twisted porches and full of rubble: after a powerful fertiliser plant explosion on Wednesday night, the small town of West looks more like "a scene from Baghdad" than a close-knit Texas community.

At 7.29pm on Wednesday, a fire raged in the plant, its flames visible for miles. Within half an hour, an explosion so powerful it registered as a 2.1-magnitude earthquake on the US Geological Survey website, flattened buildings, ripped up walls and threw people on the ground blocks away.

Half the town was evacuated, including a nursing home with 133 residents. At West Intermediate School, which was close to the blast site, all of the building's windows were blown out, as well as the cafeteria.

"I had an expectation of what I would see, but what I saw went beyond my expectations in a bad way," Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said on Thursday after his visit. "It is very disturbing to see the site."

Local authorities are working with federal officials, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, to determine the cause of the deadly explosion.

Casualties
Some 60 people remain unaccounted for and the number of injured is about 200. Some 12 people, mostly firefighters, are known to have died in the massive explosion, which tore through the roof of West Fertilizer Co, sending massive flames into the air. A deafening boom echoed for miles.

Derrick Hurt videoed the blast on his mobile phone from a distance, in his car. The voice of his 12-year-old daughter Chloe, sitting in the car with him, can be heard screaming and pleading “get out of here, please get out of here, please get out of here”.

She later told ABC News journalist Cecilia Vega, who has been on the scene since the explosion occurred, “we knew there was going to be an explosion but we didn’t think it was going to be that big”.

Vega says she spoke to “terrified” residents on Thursday, who described the shock and pain of the destruction of their 2,800-person town.

West, Texas is about 75 miles south of Dallas and 20 miles north of Waco. The explosion coincided almost exactly with the 20th anniversary of a fire in Waco that ended a federal agents’ siege against members of the Branch Davidian sect.

Mushroom cloud
As locals fled from the mushroom cloud that engulfed the skies after the explosion, firefighters rushed to the rescue, many of them volunteers.

Five West firefighters, one Dallas firefighter and four emergency workers were killed.

"We still are holding out some hope," West Mayor Tommy Muska, a volunteer firefighter himself, said during a press conference on Thursday, but he cautioned that the number of casualties could rise.

'Heavy heart'
Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt Jason Reyes said yesterday morning it was "with a heavy heart" that he confirmed 12 bodies had been pulled from the area of the plant explosion. he said authorities had cleared 150 buildings so far, with another 25 left to examine. Fifty homes are damaged. Search and rescue teams continue to look for survivors near the scene of the explosion. No media are allowed into the affected areas around the site – which remain "very volatile" because of the presence of ammonium nitrate, according to Matt Cawthon, chief deputy sheriff of McLennan County.

Though there are no indications of criminal activity, and no confirmed reports of a bomb, it has not been ruled out yet. It's also unclear whether the plant had safety problems: in 2006, the Environmental Protection Agency fined the company that ran the plant for problems that included a failure to file a risk management programme plan on time.