i would like to mention again not only have we had local fire, rescue, police, medical services but we have had assistance from the dallas fort worth metroplex as well. there has been an outpouring of support from law enforcement, fire, medical, red cross is here. from my understanding the governmental agencies are here sa assisting. fema has been aware. all of those issues will work out at a certain point in time. our main goal and main function is to rescue those we can rescue and get them the medical help they can need and help those people start surviving. do you have a number of the staffing at the time in the plant? i don t have a number of staffing. i haven t even heard they were in the process of shutting down, had a skeleton crew there, i don t know that information. are there rescue and cadaver dogs making their way through the area? there will be at some point.
aft will bring explosive dogs in. i am guessing at some point depending on the devastation to the homes businesses may use dogs to help. (inaudible question) i think that s a safety concern just for that area. we would much rather folks remain in homes, certainly we don t want people wandering the neighborhood. obviously there will be concerns of people coming into the neighborhood and trying to sight see. this is not the time to do this. this town has suffered a devastating set back they will recover from. they need more support than they need people wandering site sght seeing through that you are homes. (inaudible question)
reports as saying when she saw the fire she started driving toward it to see if she could help out. two boys came in and said you can t come in here they are telling us all to leave because the fertilizer plant is on fire and there s a danger of explosion. people were told to leave the area prior to the blast itself. according to sergeant swanson they started evacuating people once they realized there was a potential for this devastation. it could have been potentially much worse. i asked that specific question because they know in texas what can happen at a fertilizer plant. the worst industrial accident that has ever happened in this country happened in texas at a fertilizer plant. happened on april 16th if that is ironic to you way back in 1947 in texas city texas at a fertilizer plant. it exploded similar to what is happening here today. in that explosion 581 people
police department. ee oo those of you that are new to the briefing tonight that hadn t been here earlier i am william patrick stanton from waco police department. i have been asked to assist tonight. obviously west pd, the judge from this area, they are all very busy in the town town area working what they need to be doing. my job think point is to try to keep you here and give you as much information as i can and fill you in as best as i can. i know from doing a a couple of these asking you not to answer or not ask questions is not going to work. there are some things i will tell you i do not know. i won t rehash old stuff unless everybody needs that or there are folks here that need it. you are all aware of why we are here i am assuming. here is what i have so far.
but again this happened at 8:00 p.m. central time, local time. 9:00 p.m. eastern so the sun was starting to go down. so after the initial explosion, by the time all of the crews could get in here especially the news helicopters, all of the aerial pictures we have so far are all in the darkness. night had already fallen. we are really going to get our sfirns of how widespread, how devastating and how big of an area we are tally talking about here once the sun starts to rise over the next couple of hours. mu and those initial teams can get in there, the helicopters will be up in the air and bring the first aerial pictures. by all accounts we are hearing blocks and blocks of this tiny community in between waco and dallas texas leveled by this explosion patti ann and heather.