Chemical Safety Board: West Fertilizer Tragedy Was Avoidable
February 2, 2016 The U.S. Chemical Safety Board on Thursday prescribed ways to prevent another explosive catastrophe like the one that devastated West in April 2013, while lamenting that its past prescriptions went unheeded, reports J.B. Smith with the Waco Tribune-Herald.
“The fire and explosion did not have to happen,” CSB chairwoman Vanessa Sutherland said in a news conference before a public meeting Thursday in Waco, where it adopted a 265-page report on the disaster. “Part of our job is to ensure that incidents like this do not happen again.”
Among many recommendations, the 265-page report calls on EPA to regulate the fertilizer responsible for the blast, ammonium nitrate, as an “extremely hazardous” substance.
Had the EPA adopted that policy when the CSB originally urged it in 2002, West Fertilizer Co. would have had to submit a risk management plan to the EPA on its ammonium nitrate storage. That might have resulted in fireproof storage or other safeguards that could have prevented the loss of 15 lives, many more injuries and $246 million in property damage.
Head on over to WacoTrib.com to get the full story from Herald reporter J.B. Smith.
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