Massive explosion near Waco, Tx.

[GrantDawg]

Leveled most of town of West. A nursing home has reportedly collapsed.

http://www.wfaa.com/news/texas-news/...203508001.html

[GrantDawg]

Here is video of the explosion:
CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Fertilizer plant explosion near Waco | KWKT Fox 44 | Central Texas

They are now having to evacuate the football field they were using as triage.

[RainMaker]

That is insane. Hopefully no one was around there. Seeing reports it destroyed about 4 blocks of homes and the same thing about the nursing home.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

That is insane. Hopefully no one was around there. Seeing reports it destroyed about 4 blocks of homes and the same thing about the nursing home.

Unfortunately, there are many. Scanner right now reporting a apartment building burning, with FF's trapped.

[Matthean]

Yeah, that explosion was huge.

[GrantDawg]

Firefighters were on the scene when the intial explosion happened. There going to be some injured heroes.

[Edward64]

Two tragedies in a week. Pretty sad.

[GrantDawg]

Dr. George Smith, West EMS, believes there are 60-70 dead.

[GrantDawg]

Twitter / NewsBreaker: BREAKING: Stunning photo of ...

[JonInMiddleGA]

That apartment complex photo reminds me of the destruction from the OKC bombing. Whether that's coincidental or something about the nature of the explosive is at least one notch past my level of understanding.

*I'm talking about the fertilizer aspect, not suggesting tonight's explosion is connected to terrorism at all

[Matthean]

250-300 additional staff being brought in.

[bhlloy]

We take firefighters (and all first responders) for granted far too often

[cartman]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

That apartment complex photo reminds me of the destruction from the OKC bombing. Whether that's coincidental or something about the nature of the explosive is at least one notch past my level of understanding.

*I'm talking about the fertilizer aspect, not suggesting tonight's explosion is connected to terrorism at all

No doubt. OKC was just a U-Haul truck sized amount of fertilizer. This was the whole damn factory.

This town is very well known to people in Texas. Nearly every time I drive between Austin and Ft. Worth, I stop at the Czech Stop and get a dozen of their famous kolaches.

[Matthean]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

That apartment complex photo reminds me of the destruction from the OKC bombing.

West Fertilizer Co. reported having as much as 54,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia. The OKC bomb was 4800 pounds.

Early reports have the number of houses damaged at 50-70.

[dolfin]

To give you guys an idea of how strong this explosion was, I live about 60 miles north of West near Dallas, and we heard a big rumble and had our windows shake. We thought we had an earthquake and started asking friends if they had felt the same thing. Pretty amazing. I fear there are going to be many fatalities.

[Senator]

We felt the rumble here in Fort Worth. I thought it was Thunder as a storm was moving in.

Like cartman said, it's a well known "small" town here in Texas.

Disaster seems to be getting his day in the sun, lately.

[SnowMan]

I work at a fertilizer plant. We make anhydrous ammonia and ammonium nitrate, too. Nasty stuff.

[Subby]

My sister-in-law's family lives 12 miles from West in Hill County (I think much of West might be surrounded by Hill Co., although it is in a different county). The blast woke them up and they thought it was one of their kids kicking the wall. Then they thought it was really bad thunder.

My SIL's husband, who is the elected judge in Hill Co., got the call, and he and most of the county's first responders went to West for most of the night to help. Per my SIL: "The first responders and everyone on scene will need many prayers for a long night tonight and the days to come."

[saldana]

the blast could be heard 45 miles away and registered as a magnitude 2.1 earthquake.

two things of note in that video for me...one, the difference between the speed of light and the speed of sound was incredible...you saw everything and then heard it a split second later.

second...what kind of a moron takes his daughter in to go watch a fire at an industrial facility that has the potential to explode?

[cschex]

This is awful. As cartman said, West is a very well known town for many travelers on the I-35 corridor. I have a co-worker who's from there and she said at least some of her family had lost their homes and many more are injured.

[ISiddiqui]

Sad stuff

[JonInMiddleGA]

Since several people here mentioned being somewhat familiar with the area, I'm gonna throw out something that someone brought up on my FB.

In addition to the apartment complex that was damaged by the explosion, there's also been reports of a middle school being damaged. Looking at Google Maps last night, the school seems awfully close to the plant & looks like it was only a block or two more to the local hospital. That's some rather curious zoning IMO.

Anybody down that way able to share some insight about that? Would that sort of location for a plant (or conversely the school & hospital, whichever came first I suppose) be normal in that part of Texas?

[sterlingice]

I can't speak for that part of Texas. However, Houston has no zoning.

SI

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

However, Houston has no zoning.

[cartman]

The town only has a couple of thousand residents, with the town clustered close to either side of I-35. The plant was basically right on the railroad tracks, and I think had been there in some form or another for quite a long time.

[JPhillips]

As you go west zoning is seen by a large number of people as a tyranny of the government.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Come on, Jon. You live in the south. Zoning here means "making sure the important peoples land is worth more than anyone else." If a zoning members friend owned a field next to the plant, of course they will sell to the city or county at a good mark up for a Middle school, or an apartment building, or a nursing home.

[molson]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

As you go west zoning is seen by a large number of people as a tyranny of the government.

No, a lot of us in the west do find time to institute zoning when we have a few minutes between hunts and militia meetings. Our local authorities sometimes even make zoning decisions based on the political connections of businesses - just like they do in the more enlightened northeast!

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by GrantDawg

Come on, Jon. You live in the south. Zoning here means "making sure the important peoples land is worth more than anyone else." If a zoning members friend owned a field next to the plant, of course they will sell to the city or county at a good mark up for a Middle school, or an apartment building, or a nursing home.

I guess my experience has been different. There are still some places (counties at least) where there's no zoning but honestly, I had relatively little trouble managing to get zoning to stick even against the powers that be in a corrupt little town. One good lawyer, problem solved.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by molson

No, a lot of us in the west do find time to institute zoning when we have a few minutes between hunts and militia meetings. Our local authorities sometimes even make zoning decisions based on the political connections of businesses - just like they do in the more enlightened northeast!

Yeah, I found that comment a bit amusing. There's plenty of planned zoning west of New York, contrary to popular belief. We've spend several months working out the zoning for our winery property as we plan future development and much of it is related to what is in the immediate area around us.

I will say that my two years in Baltimore taught me how little East Coast residents know about how the rest of the nation works. They're in a bit of an incubator out there.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Seriously:
Houston - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by wiki

Though Houston is the largest city in the United States without formal zoning regulations, it has developed similarly to other Sun Belt cities because the city's land use regulations and legal covenants have played a similar role.^[67][68] Regulations include mandatory lot size for single-family houses and requirements that parking be available to tenants and customers. Such restrictions have had mixed results. Though some^[68] have blamed the city's low density, urban sprawl, and lack of pedestrian-friendliness on these policies, the city's land use has also been credited with having significant affordable housing, sparing Houston the worst effects of the 2008 real estate crisis.^[69]

Voters rejected efforts to have separate residential and commercial land-use districts in 1948, 1962, and 1993. Consequently, rather than a single central business district as the center of the city's employment, multiple districts have grown throughout the city in addition to downtown which include Uptown, Texas Medical Center, Midtown, Greenway Plaza, Memorial City, Energy Corridor, Westchase, and Greenspoint.

It makes the city a giant sprawly mess with traffic and makes Atlanta's urban planning look downright, well, planned. It has a huge plus side in that I think it substantially contributes to keeping property values really low for a city its size.

However, the negative is that a lot of the city is dingy and crappy because there's nothing preventing some group from buying up the land next to a shiny new subdivision and converting it into a set of low rent apartments, adult book store, or a landfill. Everything remotely nice is a "gated community" just as a barrier from the outside world.

Plus, it makes mass transit planning difficult as you have so many business and residential corridors. Business and residential areas still spring up along the major highways and one could run commuter lines down each one but connecting the hubs is a nightmare. Subsequently, we have horrible traffic problems and a light rail system that in 2015 will cover maybe half of the innermost of 3 loops around the city (for the locals: I'm counting 1960/6 and 99 as the outer loop) and maybe by 2020, cover most of the inner loop. Never mind that about 5 million of the city's 6 million residents live outside of that inner loop.

SI

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

I will say that my two years in Baltimore taught me how little East Coast residents know about how the rest of the nation works. They're in a bit of an incubator out there.

Substitute Richmond for Baltimore and I had the same experience. Most people couldn't any state on a map and, further, couldn't be bothered to as it just wasn't important to them. I think the standard map of the US from the East Coast consists of intimate knowledge of neighborhoods in their own area (like exits of the Jersey turnpike) and a general knowledge of the area from Boston down to DC.

Rarer knowledge would be that somewhere south of all of that is Florida, south central is Texas, and way over on the far coast is California. Everything else just is a giant dark space with "here be dragons".

SI

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

Seriously

Honestly, I had no idea.

I can't even fathom such a thing. I wouldn't want to live in a small town without zoning at this point, much less an urban area.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Honestly, I had no idea.

I can't even fathom such a thing. I wouldn't want to live in a small town without zoning at this point, much less an urban area.

I've had lots of people attempt to explain it to me but it's really frustrating as someone in the market for a house right now. You're just paranoid that as soon as you put down cash, you're just waiting for your house value to drop.

Sure, we're looking at paying $150-$180K for a 2500 sqft home. That's great! But there's just this 50 year ring of suck that you have to keep escaping. Once that subdivision you buy in fills up, they just start on the next 2-5 mile layer out, making your home less desirable and it's just a matter of time before the crap from the middle of the city catches you so you have to keep moving out every decade or so (some locations better than others).

The middle is nice in parts and constantly gentrifying because of the demand and the horrific traffic. Houses around Rice and the Texas Med Center, where I work, are in the $500K-$1M+ range but are just blocks away from $50K slums. I think the heat map for property values in Houston looks like this odd donut shape where (parts of) the middle is good and the outermost area is good but the area inbetween is in various states of disrepair. Now, I know that's not much different than other urban areas but with zoning, there are parts all along the way that can insulate themselves from decay but that just doesn't happen here.

SI

[Autumn]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

Yeah, I found that comment a bit amusing. There's plenty of planned zoning west of New York, contrary to popular belief. We've spend several months working out the zoning for our winery property as we plan future development and much of it is related to what is in the immediate area around us.

I will say that my two years in Baltimore taught me how little East Coast residents know about how the rest of the nation works. They're in a bit of an incubator out there.

It certainly has been my (albeit maybe biased somehow) experience that there is a much lower percentage of zoning out "west". In New England you'll be lucky to find any town that isn't highly zoned at all. Even in Vermont, which is about as rural as you could get, there aren't very many towns without zoning restrictions. However, I know a lot of people cohousing or cooperative living places head west because they can find land easily without zoning restrictions.

[Vince, Pt. II]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

I will say that my two years in _____ taught me how little _______ residents know about how the rest of the nation works. They're in a bit of an incubator out there.

I think this is true of just about everywhere. There are plenty of people here in the Bay Area that have absolutely no clue how things work elsewhere. Dating a girl from Jersey and living with another from Brooklyn, I've learned that even my well-educated ass is not nearly as knowledgeable as I'd like to think it is.

[JeeberD]

I didn't realize you were back in Texas, SI. Congrats!

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

Most people couldn't any state on a map and, further, couldn't be bothered to as it just wasn't important to them. I think the standard map of the US from the East Coast consists of intimate knowledge of neighborhoods in their own area (like exits of the Jersey turnpike) and a general knowledge of the area from Boston down to DC.

SI

And many in the rest of the country think New Jersey is just a collection of shitty cities off the Turnpike and have no clue why it is called The Garden State. It goes both ways.

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by molson

No, a lot of us in the west do find time to institute zoning when we have a few minutes between hunts and militia meetings. Our local authorities sometimes even make zoning decisions based on the political connections of businesses - just like they do in the more enlightened northeast!

Lighten up, Francis.

I'm not saying there's no zoning outside of the Northeast, but there are more areas of unzoned space. I saw it in Jackson, MS when I lived there. It wasn't true when I was growing up in southern Ohio, but it is now. I know about Houston. There are plenty of examples of more libertarian leaning types against a lot of zoning regulations. That's true amongst the libertarians in NH as well. Libertarians don't like government telling them what they can and can't do.

Not sure why that pissed you off to such a degree.

[molson]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

Lighten up, Francis.

I'm not saying there's no zoning outside of the Northeast, but there are more areas of unzoned space. I saw it in Jackson, MS when I lived there. It wasn't true when I was growing up in southern Ohio, but it is now. I know about Houston. There are plenty of examples of more libertarian leaning types against a lot of zoning regulations. That's true amongst the libertarians in NH as well. Libertarians don't like government telling them what they can and can't do.

Not sure why that pissed you off to such a degree.

I was amused more than pissed off, as I often am when you attempt to characterize other viewpoints (i.e., less restrictive zoning philosophies must be due to fear of "tyranny of the government") There's plenty of different ways to approach zoning, people can have different approaches and still be rational, and in fact, many western cities can be very restrictive - we just have more space between cities and a lot more unincorporated land. I would think zoning, more than almost anything else government does, can and should vary a ton based on the characteristics of the cities and towns and people and businesses specific to every place. It's not fear of government tyranny, it just sometimes makes more sense to zone an sparsely populated county with tons of available land differently than New York City.

[claphamsa]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

Substitute Richmond for Baltimore and I had the same experience. Most people couldn't any state on a map and, further, couldn't be bothered to as it just wasn't important to them. I think the standard map of the US from the East Coast consists of intimate knowledge of neighborhoods in their own area (like exits of the Jersey turnpike) and a general knowledge of the area from Boston down to DC.

Rarer knowledge would be that somewhere south of all of that is Florida, south central is Texas, and way over on the far coast is California. Everything else just is a giant dark space with "here be dragons".

SI

as it should be!

[Crapshoot]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Honestly, I had no idea.

I can't even fathom such a thing. I wouldn't want to live in a small town without zoning at this point, much less an urban area.

Jon, you sound almost...leftist on this.

[Crapshoot]

Originally Posted by Vince, Pt. II

I think this is true of just about everywhere. There are plenty of people here in the Bay Area that have absolutely no clue how things work elsewhere. Dating a girl from Jersey and living with another from Brooklyn, I've learned that even my well-educated ass is not nearly as knowledgeable as I'd like to think it is.

Those of us in California are honest about how we see America.

How Californians See America [PIC]

[molson]

Originally Posted by Crapshoot

Jon, you sound almost...leftist on this.

Is local government regulation a leftish thing? If so, I know some local politicians I need to explain this to.

[Matthean]

Interesting how my news feed on FB is still 100% Boston and nothing really on Texas.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Crapshoot

Jon, you sound almost...leftist on this.

Nah. Not much that's more conservative than protecting property values.

edit to add: You have to remember also that I'm probably an even more unapologetic authoritarian than I am a conservative.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by Lathum

And many in the rest of the country think New Jersey is just a collection of shitty cities off the Turnpike and have no clue why it is called The Garden State. It goes both ways.

I had the pleasure of getting lost in an area around Princeton that was pretty nice. However, my memories of that day are mainly about how it was pouring rain and how we didn't know where we were and how we didn't have GPS.

SI

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by molson

I was amused more than pissed off, as I often am when you attempt to characterize other viewpoints (i.e., less restrictive zoning philosophies must be due to fear of "tyranny of the government") There's plenty of different ways to approach zoning, people can have different approaches and still be rational, and in fact, many western cities can be very restrictive - we just have more space between cities and a lot more unincorporated land. I would think zoning, more than almost anything else government does, can and should vary a ton based on the characteristics of the cities and towns and people and businesses specific to every place. It's not fear of government tyranny, it just sometimes makes more sense to zone an sparsely populated county with tons of available land differently than New York City.

Tyranny was over the top, much like your enlightened Northeast comment directed at a person that's lived 80% of his life in the South or rural midwest.

But a lot of the opposition to zoning comes from libertarian types that don't believe the government should tell them where they can and can't build. A lot of opposition is based on opposition to government control.

[RendeR]

I don't see zoning laws as a leftist issue. its a safety issue. Take a look at this actual topic (which we have strayed too far from).

Properly done zoning laws probably would have saved a lot of lives last night. Speculation, sure, but the circumstantial evidence is pretty heavy.

Now can we ditch this randomness and get back to talking about the people in that poor town? A whole lot of families just had their world destroyed.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by JeeberD

I didn't realize you were back in Texas, SI. Congrats!

Yeah, about 9 months ago. Met cartman at Opening Day this year, actually. Give a head's up if you plan on coming down for an Astros game and we can meet

SI