WEST, Texas - After spending the night sifting the debris left by the devastating explosion at a fertilizer plant, authorities Friday raised the number of dead to 14, many of them firefighters and other emergency responders who were the first to arrive at the scene.
Sgt. Jason Reyes of the Texas Department of Public Safety said the bodies would be sent to the Dallas County medical examiner’s office for identification and that more information would be provided later.
“We’re still in search-and-rescue mode,” Reyes said at a news conference Friday morning.
Earlier in the day, after he had toured the site, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said 60 people remained unaccounted for, an estimate that included many people who had been reported missing by relatives unable to locate them immediately after the blast. But County Judge Scott Felton of McLennan County, who joined Gov. Rick Perry at an afternoon news conference, said he would be “surprised if it’s more than a few.”
President Barack Obama on Friday night issued an emergency declaration and pledged disaster relief aid to Texas to help in the recovery efforts.
Reyes said about 200 people were injured and that at least 50 homes were damaged by the explosion, which was caused by a fire inside the plant Wednesday evening. The plant is surrounded by houses, a 50-unit apartment complex, three schools and a nursing home.
Investigators from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board and other federal agencies swarmed the remains of the plant Friday. They focused on a pair of reinforced steel tanks that stored anhydrous ammonia, an inexpensive liquid fertilizer commonly used across rural America. Under some conditions, it can turn into flammable gas.
Authorities prohibited anyone not involved in the search-and-rescue effort from entering the area around the plant and put a no-fly restriction on the airspace overhead.
A spokesman for the FBI in San Antonio said Thursday that there had been no indication of criminal activity in the explosion.
Raymond Snokhous, a retired lawyer who lives in West, spoke of the blast, seesawing between sadness over the devastation and relief at having survived it.
“It was a dandy, I tell you,” he said in a telephone interview, adding, “That was a bad experience. Fortunately, we got through it unscathed, but unfortunately, a lot of people didn’t.”
He was sitting with friends Wednesday evening at the Knights of Columbus Hall, several hundred yards from the plant, for the group’s regular meeting.
“We were just about to get it started when the dadgum thing blew,” he said. “It shook that building so bad - knocked a lot of the guys out of their chairs. All the ceiling panels and so forth came down, and the light fixtures fell out and the insulation fell out all over everything, and it was not a pleasant sight. The noise was excruciating.”
Two of his second-cousins, he said, were killed in the explosion. “They were firemen,” he said. “Two young lives that didn’t need to go - but they’re gone.”
The town of West is home to a number of Czech-Americans, and one of its most popular stores is the Czech Stop and Little Czech Bakery, which serves strudel and kolache, a puffy pastry filled with meat or fruit.
The Embassy of the Czech Republic in Washington issued a statement expressing its condolences to the families of the victims, several of whom were of Czech descent, embassy officials said.
The Czech ambassador, Petr Gandalovic, arrived in West on Thursday.
One of the firefighters who died was Kenny Harris, 52, a captain with Dallas Fire-Rescue. He lived in West but was not a member of the town’s volunteer department. He had been off duty when he learned of the fire at the plant, according to a spokesman for Dallas Fire-Rescue.
“Captain Harris rushed to the scene compelled to provide assistance to his community during this crisis,” Mayor Mike Rawlings of Dallas said in a statement. “I want to express my deepest condolences to his family, friends and co-workers.”
Also included in the dead was Joey Pustejovsky, the West city secretary who doubled as a member of the West Volunteer Fire Department.
Reyes said he could not confirm how many first-responders had been killed.
Plant owner Donald Adair released a statement saying he would never forget the “selfless sacrifice of first-responders who died trying to protect all of us.”
One of the plant employees was also killed responding to the fire, Adair said.
Information for this article was contributed by Clifford Krauss, Fernanda Santos, Manny Fernandez, John Schwartz and Emma G. Fitzsimmons of The New York Times and by Christopher Sherman, Will Weissert, Juan Carlos Llorca, John L. Mone, Raquel Maria Dillon and staff members of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 8 on 04/20/2013