Explosion at fertilizer plant north of Waco, Texas

you're trolling

have a nice day

 

Has anyone considered that Obama is not visiting West because it is a major disaster area and it takes a lot of resources to stage a Presidential visit? Obama didn't visit NYC right after Sandy because local officials said it would be difficult to accommodate him. Boston was very tragic but the physical damage caused by the bombings wasn't close to what is happening in West.

 

Nope, I just kicked your butt baby!!!

BOOM! Bigtexx goes down hard!

 

Nah. Why consider that when you can attack!

 

This article was posted in the Hangout thread but it also belongs here.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/20/us-usa-explosion-regulation-idUSBRE93J09N20130420

Here are some important quotes:
[rquoter](Reuters) - The fertilizer plant that exploded on Wednesday, obliterating part of a small Texas town and killing at least 14 people, had last year been storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Yet a person familiar with DHS operations said the company that owns the plant, West Fertilizer, did not tell the agency about the potentially explosive fertilizer as it is required to do, leaving one of the principal regulators of ammonium nitrate - which can also be used in bomb making - unaware of any danger there.

Fertilizer plants and depots must report to the DHS when they hold 400 lb (180 kg) or more of the substance. Filings this year with the Texas Department of State Health Services, which weren't shared with DHS, show the plant had 270 tons of it on hand last year.

A U.S. congressman and several safety experts called into question on Friday whether incomplete disclosure or regulatory gridlock may have contributed to the disaster.

"It seems this manufacturer was willfully off the grid," Rep. Bennie Thompson, (D-MS), ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said in a statement. "This facility was known to have chemicals well above the threshold amount to be regulated under the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Act (CFATS), yet we understand that DHS did not even know the plant existed until it blew up."
...
Failure to report significant volumes of hazardous chemicals at a site can lead the DHS to fine or shut down fertilizer operations, a person familiar with the agency's monitoring regime said. Though the DHS has the authority to carry out spot inspections at facilities, it has a small budget for that and only a "small number" of field auditors, the person said.

Firms are responsible for self reporting the volumes of ammonium nitrate and other volatile chemicals they hold to the DHS, which then helps measure plant risks and devise security and safety plans based on them.

Since the agency never received any so-called top-screen report from West Fertilizer, the facility was not regulated or monitored by the DHS under its CFAT standards, largely designed to prevent sabotage of sites and to keep chemicals from falling into criminal hands.

The DHS focuses "specifically on enhancing security to reduce the risk of terrorism at certain high-risk chemical facilities," said agency spokesman Peter Boogaard. "The West Fertilizer Co. facility in West, Texas is not currently regulated under the CFATS program."

The West Fertilizer facility was subject to other reporting, permitting and safety programs, spread across at least seven state and federal agencies, a patchwork of regulation that critics say makes it difficult to ensure thorough oversight.

An expert in chemical safety standards said the two major federal government programs that are supposed to ensure chemical safety in industry - led by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) - do not regulate the handling or storage of ammonium nitrate. That task falls largely to the DHS and the local and state agencies that oversee emergency planning and response.
...
"This shows that the enforcement routine has to be more robust, on local, state and federal levels," said the expert, Sam Mannan, director of process safety center at Texas A&M University. "If information is not shared with agencies, which appears to have happened here, then the regulations won't work."
...
Wednesday's blast heightens concerns that regulations governing ammonium nitrate and other chemicals - present in at least 6,000 depots and plants in farming states across the country - are insufficient. The facilities serve farmers in rural areas that typically lack stringent land zoning controls, many of the facilities sit near residential areas.

Apart from the DHS, the West Fertilizer site was subject to a hodgepodge of regulation by the EPA, OSHA, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Texas Department of State Health Services, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Office of the Texas State Chemist.

But the material is exempt from some mainstays of U.S. chemicals safety programs. For instance, the EPA's Risk Management Program (RMP) requires companies to submit plans describing their handling and storage of certain hazardous chemicals. Ammonium nitrate is not among the chemicals that must be reported.

In its RMP filings, West Fertilizer reported on its storage of anhydrous ammonia and said that it did not expect a fire or explosion to affect the facility, even in a worst-case scenario. And it had not installed safeguards such as blast walls around the plant.

A separate EPA program, known as Tier II, requires reporting of ammonium nitrate and other hazardous chemicals stored above certain quantities. Tier II reports are submitted to local fire departments and emergency planning and response groups to help them plan for and respond to chemical disasters. In Texas, the reports are collected by the Department of State Health Services. Over the last seven years, according to reports West Fertilizer filed, 2012 was the only time the company stored ammonium nitrate at the facility.

It reported having 270 tons on site.

"That's just a god awful amount of ammonium nitrate," said Bryan Haywood, the owner of a hazardous chemical consulting firm in Milford, Ohio. "If they were doing that, I would hope they would have gotten outside help."

In response to a request from Reuters, Haywood, who has been a safety engineer for 17 years, reviewed West Fertilizer's Tier II sheets from the last six years. He said he found several items that should have triggered the attention of local emergency planning authorities - most notably the sudden appearance of a large amount of ammonium nitrate in 2012.

"As a former HAZMAT coordinator, that would have been a red flag for me," said Haywood, referring to hazardous materials.[/rquoter]

 

you make too many excuses trying to rationalize things

 

The government can make you feel better by patting you on the back and showing up in person to say they're sorry for your loss, but they better not have the ability to try and stop this kind of disaster so they aren't expected to show up in the first place! - Modern Republican thinking

 

I don't understand why it is a shock it isn't inspected all the time. There isn't much changing over time in a tank. They were inspected in 2011 and got dinged for signage. Also OSHA certainly isn't the entity doing it. Leaking nh3 didn't cause a fire and huge surprise people could smell it when the facility was on fire. Series of unfortunate events caused the explosion. morons can say texas conservatism caused if they feel the need to continue being morons.

 

Maybe there should be an experiment setup where Texas get rid of EPA, FDA, SEC and all the other regulatory agencies for 50 years and we see how it works out. I am sure Republicans and libertarians would be eager to show how well this can work for Texas.

 

A building caught on fire, it happens.

 

Yes, it's clear that self-regulation by industry works really well. I think these people would welcome unregulated plants and factories in their neighborhoods near their schools and homes and prevent those pesty gov't inspectors from getting anywhere close!

I am for it! Let's move all industry to the most conservative places in the country. And then we can cut regulation to close to zero.

 

What I want to see if Republicans are right that without regulations the corporations would regulate themselves. No better state to do it than Texas.

I know this did not work the last century, and it does not work in countries like China currently, but maybe the businesses have changed in the US over time. We need a test case. I am sure if some Texans die in the process no one in the state would mind because they would have their freedom.

 

How can anyone anticipate a building catching on fire that just happens to have enough explosives to wipe out half a ton.

No one can conceive of such a crazy thing. It's like the most impossible scenario possible.

 

lulz at the grave dancers (RM95, Sweet Lou). What a delightful week for them to celebrate the deaths of innocents in Texas.

What they haven't been able to articulate is what regulations would have been present in other states (besides Texas) that would have prevented this tragedy from happening. So until they're able to do that, they're simply grave dancing without even the ability to back up as to why they're doing that.

 

Right? Only folks completely ignorant of the industry would call this anything but gross negligence.

 

The building didn't have the massive pile of ammonium nitrate genius.

 

By the operator of the plant for having that amount in a place he shouldn't have. The plant was regulated and inspected. That was likely his product, or one of them.

 

Honestly, that's a sick accusation. You should apologize for that. I'm deeply offended. Seriously - what's wrong with you?

 

Right, because fires don't spread from one building to another...genius.

 

You realize the regulating body that failed in this case was the Federal DHS right? I know you love trying to ignorantly blame this on conservative Texas politics, but it is extremely weak.