Experts Tell Senate Panel That Fertilizer Blast Could Have Been Prevented

July 24, 2013- April’s deadly fertilizer blast in Texas could have been averted, chemical safety experts told a Senate committee last week. The 90-minute hearing was Congress’ first look at the April 17 blast, which registered as a small earthquake, left a 10-foot-deep crater, killed 15 people and destroyed a section of the small Central Texas town.

The dangers of storing explosive materials in wooden containers and buildings are well known. Various fire codes and industry standards call for sprinklers. Proximity to homes and schools added to the risk.

11 years had passed since the federal agency that investigates industrial accidents urged the Environmental Protection Agency to add ammonium nitrate — the substance that detonated — to a list of hazards requiring a local emergency plan.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, called adoption of that “critical safeguard” long overdue.

Boxer accused the EPA of showing an appalling “lack of urgency.” The California Democrat demanded that it add the widely used fertilizer material to its hazard list within two weeks.

The chairman of the federal Chemical Safety Board, Rafael Moure-Eraso, identified a “patchwork” of federal, state and local regulations whose shortcomings failed to stop the detonation of roughly 30 tons of ammonium nitrate.

The material should be kept within firewalls rated to halt the spread of flames for an hour, he said. That would have been plenty of time for firefighters to tamp down the blaze that set off the blast, and diligent inspections would have caught that such walls weren’t present.

It was revealed that the plant hadn’t been inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 1985. And an OSHA inspection could have made the difference, Texas A&M safety expert Sam Mannan said, by catching the failure to separate the fertilizer from flammable materials around it.