The Texas Public Safety Commission along with Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw, presented a Director’s Citation, two Lifesaving Awards and two Unit Citations at the PSC meeting on Aug. 24, at DPS Headquarters in Austin.[San Marcos, TX] [Hays County news] News San Marcos News, San Marcos Record [Texas State]
Local man prepares for 60-mile trek in honor of the West explosion, fallen firefighters
Erin Heft
and last updated 2021-04-16 08:19:03-04
TEMPLE, TX â Making a 60-mile trek from Temple to West each April, one Temple area man, Danny McDonald, rides in honor of the 15 lives lost that fateful day.
Saturday, April 17 2021 marks the eighth anniversary of the tragic West Fertilizer Plant Explosion and the beginning of the mass recovery effort of Central Texas. For this, it s to honor and remember all of those that we lost that day, there were 15 lost that day and 12 of them were firefighters, said McDonald.
i can t hear! i can t hear! let s get out of here! please, get out of here! please, get out of here! oh, my god! what that was, that massive fireball was a massive ammonium nitrate explosion at the town s fertilizer plant. derrick hurt and his daughter were okay. many of their neighbors were not. that explosion left a 90-foot-wide crater in west. it was as if a daisy cutter bomb had been dropped on that town. 15 people were killed, more than 200 people were injured. a whole portion of that town was just missing in the wake of that explosion. hundreds of buildings destroyed, or damaged. i mean, given the size of the blast, it is a miracle there were not more than 15 people killed, given that the buildings heavily damaged or totally destroyed by that explosion included an apartment building, a nursing home, and three schools.
honest, i was surprised as you were that they didn t provide it. what do they have to lose at this point. they don t look good already because of the situation that they have. and it s scary to be thinking about waiting on this thing to explode. putting aside the damage that may or may not occur because of a fire or explosion, what s your sense about how damaging it may be just to have this plant be so damaged by what s about to happen? how toxic is this stuff? what type of other facilities are around it? are we looking at something that s going to be an environmental, or sort of pollution crisis even after whatever happens with the initial fire or explosion? right. actually, just a bit more than two miles down the road from the arkema facility, there s another chemical plant called kmco, they re also on our high potential for harmless. that s all based off of analysis we did with texas a&m