0 and by 7:45 they realized the fire was out of control and the fire chief ordered all of his men out of the burning plant. it was too late. seven minutes later the plant exploded. the explosion could be felt up to 70 miles away. i was in kaufman county covering the d.a. murders there and i was inside a building and the windows shook. we thought it's not supposed to be raining. the thunderstorms aren't supposed to be here for several hours. that must have been a big gust of wind. a few minutes later the cell phones started going off and we knew it was much worse than that. a terrible explosion here in the city of west. here are the latest numbers. 160 people injured. the fatality count is somewhere between 5 and 15. local authorities say between three and five firefighters are among the dead and possibly one law enforcement officer is missing. and our affiliate in houston legislative defeat of the president's second term. four months after president obama called the country to action in the wake of the newtown shootings, using all of the power of the presidency to push gun safety measures, every measure he championed went down to defeat on the senate floor. when the compromise took shape, there was optimism they could get something through the senate but this bill to expand background checks for gun buyers only managed to win 54 votes. it needed 60 to move forward. >> shame on you! >> there will be order in the senate. >> the tucson shooting survivor who wrestled a third gun clip away from gerald loughner screamed when they heard the measure had failed and were escorted out of the capitol. four democrats voted no and four republicans voted for it. after the background check legislation which the white house believed had the best chance of passing was defeated. one by one the senate blocked proposals to ban assault weapons, limit magazines and by agreeing to a 60-vote threshold on all amends, democrats held off passage of republican amendments they believed would weaken or kill the bill. an amendment sponsored by john cornyn allowing gun owners with carry conceal weapon permits to take the gun into other states. guess what? it got more votes than manchin-toomey but failed to win. 12 democrats voted for the cornyn amendment. the most bipartisan of all of the gun amendments yesterday. the fact tells the story of the gun debate better than any other. the rapid series of votes in the senate was a case of mutually assured dysfunction. neither side wanted majority to rule and in the end the president did get what he asked for. a vote. realism about prospects of gun control measure meant while pushing the issue he sent a low bar for victory. it was clear gun legislation was going nowhere in the house and the white house knew this moment would come eventually. it just came more abruptly than the white house ever expected. it was an angry president obama who responded to the defeat during a statement in the rose garden with newtown families and former congresswoman gabby giffords by his side. >> instead of supporting this compromise, the gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill. they claimed it would create some sort of big brother gun registry. those lies up set an intense minority of gun owners and that or has the emotion been taken out of the immigration debate to the extent that opponents don't see the same opportunity. we showed you those polls. there's a reason we knew guns had little chance in the senate and why immigration does have a real chance. it's going to be a rocky road. let's go to boston. the president and first lady are on the way to attend an interfaith service two hours from now to remember the victims of monday's bombings. hopes are high that officials may close in on a pair of suspects in monday's deadly attack. however, we should stress there have been no arrests as this network has reported all along. what we do know is that officials are looking closely at surveillance video that shows a man leaving a backpack outside the restaurant with a second bomb went off and they are looking for a man he was talking to. he was captured on video on a cell phone. they have decided not to release any pictures of the men they are looking for and they've had no briefings yesterday and none are scheduled for today. pete williams joins me now live with the latest. pete, the fact that the fbi is withholding these photos, what is the reason? they've been wanting public help from the beginning of this investigation. but they don't seem to want to put this in public just yet. what's holding them back? >> not yet. i would guess frankly by the end of today it's a likelihood we'll begin to see these pictures. it just depends on whether they can run the string out that they have and identify them on their own. they would prefer to do it that way of course because that way they can preserve some element of surprise here. the problem is they don't know who these people are. they are focused especially on two people now. two young men and they don't know who they are so they what they want to do is find where they are and question them and see what they were up to. they would prefer to do that on their own if they can. so far they have not been able to. i believe they will release these pictures and it may happen today, chuck. >> the fact they would release the pictures, that would be then them saying we need help finding these guys and identifying them. if you know them, let us know. >> precisely. if they do this, they will be careful in how they describe them. they will say based on what we've seen, we want to talk to them so we know one way or another what their status is. they won't describe them as suspects or persons of interest but say we need help in finding these two people. >> where is it that she got this video from? i heard various reports. it was the video from a department store. is that where they ended up finding this needle in the haystack? >> that was a key indicator but they now have several pictures of these men from all the bonanza of pictures that people have given them. it makes sense that they might have been put on it initially by the surveillance camera on a department store across the street and down the block a bit from the second bombing site. it's mounted high up on the building so it can look down on the crowd and get a bird's-eye view. if you are just standing in the crowd with your camera or cell phone, you are not going to be able to see very far deeply in the crowd but see people immediately in front of you. >> we see a lot of movies and stuff about facial recognition software. what ability -- how easy or hard is it for the fbi? they have a picture and they're searching for somebody. how hard is it for them to get an identity? >> facial recognition software just says, okay, look at this face. now tell us in what other pictures this face shows up. it doesn't say look at this face and tell us who it is. you can try to run it through various data bases but if these people aren't in a data base, there's no way facial recognition software can tell you who they are. it can just say where else might they show up. that can be very valuable in sorting through these pictures but it doesn't give you a name and phone number. >> all right. pete williams on the case for us. as always, the voice of reason here at the family of nbc networks. thank you, sir. >> okay. we are following an incredible amount of breaking news this morning. emergency crews are searching through the rubble in texas trying to find survivors from that massive fertilizer plant explosion. we expect to hear from officials there in texas and in fact we have that right now. instead of going to break, brwel bring you this press conference right now. >> my speaking up is about this. all i can tell you is good luck. >> 30 seconds out. we'll ask you not to step up. >> we are waiting now for a briefing here in west, texas, from authorities. as you can see they're doing mike test here to give us an update on exactly what's going on. a massive fertilizer plant. a fire started. firefighters were fighting it and then the explosion as that was happening. here's the briefing. >> bear with me on my voice. i'll talk the best i can and give you as much as i can but you're going to have to bear with me. if we get to the point of asking questions towards the end of this again, please speak loudly enough where i can hear you so i don't have to keep asking you what, what, what. okay. here's where we stand at this point. eventually probably in the next couple of hours i will be getting some relief. somebody will come in and take over my spot. i don't know who that is. for those of you that don't know me, i am a waco police sergeant for the city of waco. i'm the spokesperson for waco pd. my name is sergeant william patrick swanton. i'm the spokesperson for the police department in waco. we got called out here last night about 9:30 and we've been here ever since. i don't work for west pd. i don't work for mclennan county. those guys are tied up at this point so we're helping every bit that we can. it's not just us. there are numerous agencies, law enforceme enforcement, fire, first aid, responders, red cross, federal agencies, lots of folks are here and west has seen a tremendous outpouring of support in a tremendous community involvement. they have got together with each other, are leaning on each other and are very supportive. what i will try to give you at this point is a little bit more than we had before. i ask you again to bear with us as this is a bit of a tedious process down there. they are being very thorough. they are taking their time in their searches and i assure you they are not going to move fast because you all want more information. they are going to move at the speed they need to. we will try and keep you updated with what they're doing but understand that being in law enforcement 32 years i know not to bother those guys. i know what they're doing. those guys and gals out there are in a hard gut wrenching job at this point and they're doing the best that they can. that being said, i can tell you that before i leave this morning once i get a replacement here, i will make sure that we do one last briefing with you to introduce whoever it is going to be to take my spot and we'll make sure that everybody is aware that i'm no longer here and that whoever it is taking over my role and will be your go-to person for however long that will be. okay. so far what i have new for you is that at 11:45 this morning, governor perry will be doing a press conference at the dps headquarters in austin, texas. if you have affiliate stations, support staff, people that you can send there, they will be doing that again dps headquarters at 11:45. should be fairly informative about what he knows and what he can release and what he is doing and what his office and what the federal folks have offered to assist the community of west here as well. at 7:00 this morning, our ground team for lack of a better word, the folks that are there doing the search and rescue, the administrative part of that, the folks that include mclennan county sheriff's department, west police department, ems, fire, emergency management, atf, the state fire marshal and several other agencies, i know i'm forgetting some or don't know of some that are there, but will assure you there is a huge organization of mixed groups that are working together to still find survivors, to still find people that are injured, and are doing their job of going door to door. they had a briefing at 7:00 this morning with the administration there. they are continuing their search and rescue efforts. they have not changed anything that they have been doing because of weather, because of rain, because it got cold. they are continuing to search for survivors or injured people to make sure that we get them the medical help if they are still there. that being said, i don't know how many folks may still be trapped in rubble. they have not been able to give me much more on the damage other than to say that there is a significant area around the fertilizer plant that has been destroyed. homes have been destroyed. there are homes flattened. part of that community is gone. they are going again door to door. they are still searching. the weather did help us in some aspects with the chemical part of the fire. obviously keeping the chemicals down out of the environment filtering down with the rain. last thing i heard about the fire at the fertilizer plant. it was smoldering. they felt more comfortable as time goes on and are feeling better about the fire there. there were still several fires from homes that were destroyed. those fires are smoldering as well. i can tell you there is nothing out of control there at this point. there's no fire out of control. there's no chemical escape from the fertilizer plant that's out of control. they are working to contain everything that they have in that area and are doing a fantastic job in very harsh circumstances in a very rough terrain as you can imagine. i've had several requests from many of you about trying to get into the area. i will tell you i don't know when or if that is going to happen. i will tell you that the folks that are on the ground securing that neighborhood have said there are unidentified people in the neighborhoods. there has been a small amount of looting to my understanding. we are securing that neighborhood as best we can meaning that everybody that is in there will either be law enforcement, first responders, medical, somebody with a reason and an immediate reason for being there. i can't tell you the number of looters whether they have been caught. i can tell you there has been reports of people down there. whether they are going into homes or just taking things off the streets that they're finding, i don't know. that's a significant concern to us. this is a community that we are going to do our absolute best to protect and if that means offending some folks by not letting them come home right away to keep them safe, keep their neighborhood safe, then we'll do that and we'll apologize later for putting some people out. i can assure you as media that it is not safe for you to be down there right now due to the conditions of the homes and the ongoing smoldering fires. again, nothing out of control but we don't want to put anybody in harm's way and get anybody injured. at some point i assume they'll get you down there and let you see the devastation that we're talking about. i think it will be pretty dramatic for you all to actually be able to see and piece together with your stories about what you're hearing me talk about all morning. at some point that will occur. i don't know when. i apologize for not being able to give you a time line on that. that's just -- it is what it is. that will happen. i don't know when. that will be up to somebody else to do because i will be gone. there are no new numbers. there are still firefighters missing. i don't know if i told you in the last press briefing or not that one of the -- >> a very detailed briefing there. here's what we learned that's new. this morning they are still finding survivors. the search and rescue mission continues. he also talked about the concern that there's been a small amount of looting that has taken place in some neighborhoods that they are trying to prevention that. and that there will be more briefings later this morning. as you heard at the end there's no new numbers. they know there are still missing firefighters and it's unsafe for folks to go back to their homes that were evacuated and he obviously had plenty of warnings for the news media not to go in there yet. the safety concerns have to do with structural issues. let me bring in former pennsylvania governor and the first homeland security secretary of the united states, tom ridge. mr. ridge, nice to see you, sir. the protocol secretary or governor now? >> either one. i'll respond to both. >> the white house said it's fema taking the lead federal role for now in something like this. locally they are treating it as a crime scene. essentially just to rule it out. this issue -- i'm sure the issue of plants that could be of danger that somebody could do something, this was something that was of concern to homeland security all the time. the safety and how do you deal with these things, right? >> i think the primary concern would have been reflected in how hopefully people had trained for this kind of explosion. one of the things that fema has done and more dramatically the positive results of what they've been able to do over the past ten years through the department of homeland security is grants to states for training, for exercises, to definitely mutual aid protocols profoundly demonstrated with the response to the tragedy and horror up in boston so fema has a role to play and it's playing a role right now obviously with the folks in that is that texas community. >> is there a focus on trying to get communities around places small towns where chemical plants or fertilizer plants to make sure first responders have those specialty training? >> it's a great question. i'm not in a position to answer that. i do know that for example within pennsylvania we relied heavily on volunteer services. these are men and women who just -- >> got to love them. >> we know what they do. the question is how committed they are to their community. this is a small community. whether or not they had any special training -- one would like to think they did. there have been other fertilizer explosions before. there are lessons learned. whether or not either fema or the local police and fire department and emergency responders had taken those previous experiences, lessons learned and applied them, i'm not in a position to comment there. >> the incidents with ricin or the potential of ricin. is this a case where the systems worked? the new way that mail is done and it's all cordoned off and tested before it ever gets to a united states senator's office, united states congressman's office or the president of the united states. the fact that it was discovered and is this a case of the system working? >> after september 11th, 2001, there were many changes that the public sees and many they don't. one of the more fundamental ones because of the anthrax incident was channeling all of that mail through a separate facility to detect for these kinds of pois n poisons and toxic chemicals. wi it's one of the many changes that make us a more resilient country. >> how much do we not learn about sometimes? is this a case where this would have been something we may not have learned about but because of what happened in boston everybody is on higher alert? >> i remember vividly i got sworn in on october 8th by then there had been several anthrax attacks and several thereafter. one of the first problems we had was the fact the field tests were inferior and a lot of false positives. horrible hoaxes. i would like to think in intervening ten years the fields tests and it seems from what i heard that field tests that said envelopes contained ricin were confirmed and they'll confirm at a higher level of scientific inquiry. that modest improvement is a significant change in how we deal with incidents like this. just better field tests. >> we know that there's been a debate inside law enforcement community moving out of the boston investigation about when to release these pictures in public. and there are some who believe the public could be helpful in finding these guys and there are some that are worried there will be too much of a crush of public help. if you were in the middle of these debates, where would you be? >> you know, i guess if there's another -- i don't quite understand it myself. if you are looking to identify an individual or individuals but for the photograph there's no other information or evidence that points to specific individuals, you would like to think somebody in the community, maybe they rented an apartment. maybe they shopped at a store. they got their gas somewhere. someone would recognize the photos. right now i think this is a very difficult and challenging investigation. piece by piece labor intensive. i won't second-guess the law enforcement community on this one. i do wonder why not. i'm not going to second-guess. >> right now you would lean on the side of get the public's help. if we have pictures. you think some of the concern is what if these aren't the guys or if they're not at 100%, is that the issue you think potentially that they don't want to put these two people on here and what if it turns out they weren't a part of it? >> that's part of the psychology of resistance. you don't want to falsely accuse. i haven't seen videos nor has anyone else. they seem pretty confident that they either were involved directly, indirectly, perhaps had more information about it. for that reason again unless you thought they just suddenly came to the boston area and they hadn't laid down roots, they were not living there, they weren't conducting their personal affairs in the community, releasing it wouldn't do you much good. chances are good there's a presence in or around boston and they went through various activities like all of us do. gas, groceries, apartment, whatever. somebody might be able to recognize them. >> tom ridge, a lot of experience at dealing with these things. i appreciate you sharing your wisdom with us. up next, we'll talk to ka carlie soto. her sister was killed at sandy hook. there's this morning's prayer service in boston. 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