In addition to filing papers with local authorities and the Environment Protection Agency that said there was no risk of fire or explosion, the West Fertilizer Company owned fertilizer plant that exploded in West, Texas earlier this week evidently did not inform the Department of Homeland Security that they had over 500,000 pounds of highly explosive ammonium nitrate on hand.
From Reuters
(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.
Beyond the obvious implication that company management is culpable for the deaths that resulted from this explosion, the fact that this much explosive material, which Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people and inuring nearly 700 more, has gone unreported suggests to me that it could very easily fall into the wrong hands.
For perspective — McVeigh used only 4,800 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The West Fertilizer Company had over 500,000 pounds on hand last year deep in the heart of Texas and the Department of Homeland Security was completely unaware of it.