WEST, Texas, (Reuters) – Investigators sifted through debris yesterday to determine the cause of a Texas fertilizer plant explosion that obliterated parts of a small town and killed at least 14 people, including volunteer firefighters who had raced to the scene in advance to douse a blaze.
There was no indication of foul play in the fire or the blast it triggered Wednesday night at West Fertilizer Co, a privately owned retail facility that was last inspected two years ago, authorities said.
The farm supply business, located at the edge of a residential area in West, a town about 80 miles (130 km) south of Dallas, had notified a state agency that it stored potentially combustible ammonium nitrate on the site.
Mayor Tommy Muska told an afternoon news conference the confirmed death toll had risen to 14, based on the number of victims whose remains had been recovered from the vicinity of the blast. Authorities said 200 people were injured.
Texas U.S. Senator John Cornyn said the town’s deputy fire marshal told him that 60 people remained unaccounted for two days after the explosion.
But he said that number was expected to drop as individuals turn up at area hospitals or with relatives and others, some of them outside of town.
“I would just take that (number) with a grain of caution,” Cornyn said.
The confirmed dead included paramedics and volunteer firefighters who responded to an initial fire alarm, and likely were killed by the ensuing blast, which was so powerful it registered as a magnitude 2.1 earthquake.
It left a devastated landscape, reducing a 50-unit apartment complex to what one local official called “a skeleton standing up,” destroying about 50 houses and heavily damaging a nursing home and schools. Dozens more homes were reported to have been damaged.
By Friday afternoon, officials said the ruins of nearly 175 homes and other buildings left badly damaged or destroyed had been searched and “cleared.”
Authorities had said they were combing wrecked structures for people who might have been trapped.
But after touring the scene on Friday, Governor Rick Perry told reporters he had been advised that “the search and rescue phase is complete.”
Asked whether that meant no more survivors were expected to be found, he said he did not know enough to comment.
The explosion was one of a series of events that put Americans on edge this week including the Boston marathon bombings and discovery of poisoned letter addressed to President Barack Obama and a Republican U.S. senator.
Authorities were still calling the blast site a crime scene though they said they strongly suspected an accident.
The death toll was huge for a town of about 2,800 residents, and everyone seemed to know someone who died or was presumed dead.
Brian Uptmor, 37 said his brother disappeared after he went toward the fire on Wednesday night to try to save horses in a pasture near the plant.
William “Buck” Uptmor, 44, has not been found among the injured at area hospitals, has not answered his cell phone and his truck has not moved from where he left it.
“He is dead. We don’t know where his body is,” said Uptmor, a former firefighter. “It’ll probably hit me at the funeral.”
Residents of the town known for its Czech heritage gathered at the Out West Bar and Grill in downtown West on Thursday night, where some of the first responders who died in the blast used to drink beer with them.