did trigger. it was measured as a 2.5 earthquake on the richter scale. it actually is a minor earthquake. that s what it s classified at. it was detected in amarillo, texas, more than 400 miles away from the city of west in texas. just incredible how far away this traveled. there are reports this earthquake or the shake in the ground was felt as far away as waco, texas, which is about 20 miles away from west. some people, i think i heard even in dallas, texas, which is about 80 miles away from the city of west, texas. as far as the wind incredible it triggered a shake and people could feel it. this is an explosion that happened at a plant. we have an approaching cold front heading eastbound. we see winds out of the south blowing towards the north. right now they are blowing strongly. we re seeing gusts of over 30 miles per hour being recorded in the city of west. this front is headed eastbound. behind the front we will see a shift in the wind direction. they will be blowing from
is no risk to human life. but if there is risk to human life, you re going to go in there anyway. gretchen: a lot of people are writing in this morning with this particular question, which is if this fertilizer plant has been there for significant amount of time, why were there schools and nursing homes and other facilities so close to it, or is it the case that this is just a safe facility and you would build a school next to it? i m not certain which one was there first, unfortunately. no one really anticipates this, which is the worst case scenario. thplant has operated for years and years and assuming. so unfortunately, with anything mechanical, stuff breaks down and in this case, there was a resulting fire and the fire ended up in that horrific explosion that is going to be making everybody review where the facility is located and why do we really have nursing homes and schools in the close proximity. brian: if you can t stop this fire at a plant with water, what do you use?
see some pea size hail, frequent cloud to ground lightning and heavy rainfall. forecast is for more than a quarter inch of rain. less than a half inch of rain, but behind it, you can see it here, there is some areas of rain behind it. so while to the well to the west of the line of storms. we could be dealing with several hours of rain. that will complicate things as far as clean-up efforts go for the city of west and for any fire fighting efforts that we re doing across that area. the forecast radar here is basically again for several hours of rain and again, expecting a wind shift to occur now. steve: talk a little bit about how there was such a jolt from this explosion, it felt, according to the u.s. geological survey, like an earthquake. it reject sistered as a 2.5
in. steve: out of curiosity, i know the boston marathon bombing was a couple of days ago, and people immediately not only crossing the finish line, went to mass general to donate blood. but when there are big catastrophes such as the one you guys are experiencing in texas, do you see a blood donation even in texas, over 1,000 miles away from the site? absolutely. we have a wonderful blood drive going on at one of our hospitals in dallas this morning that was put together as a response by one of the running stores is working on it, giving out coupons along with house of pancakes doing breakfast. it begins at 7 a.m. our time and will go until 1:30. that is our medical city dallas hospital here. there were lots of people reaching out saying we would just like to make a statement. and i know with this blood drive at medical city this morning, they re asking all the blood donors to write a card and a note and they re going to be sending them all to first responders, to
steve: casey, that s one of the reasons, given the winds coming, it s great that they got it under control at 11:00 last night. before you go, because we re going to talk to dr. marc siegel about the medical implications of this ammonia. what was the plant manufacturing? was it anhydrous ammonia or something else? was it ammonium nitrate, that is very volatile when combined. we don t know if they re manufacturing this anhydrous ammonia or if it is a chemical being used for other items they may have been making there, if that s something they add to the fertilizer. it s hard to say at this point. there isn t a whole lot of information really out there. we ve been googling and trying to get information as far as what exactly happened at this plant, who they supplied, how many people worked there, as you were asking earlier. was this an