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(KPRC 2 News)
Randy Lee Loftis, Dallas Morning News
For Texas environmental regulators, a hometown fertilizer business that stored and sold anhydrous ammonia posed a low risk to houses, apartments and schools just a few hundred feet away.
That assessment six years ago — and numerous others by state and federal agencies over many years — ignored the danger from another type of fertilizer that is used around the world to make bombs.
Investigators at the scene of Wednesday night’s fire and explosion at the West Fertilizer Co. found ammonium nitrate, commonly used both as a fertilizer and an explosive, Matt Cawthon, chief deputy of the McLennan County sheriff’s office, said Thursday.
Other officials and records confirmed that either West Fertilizer or its sister company, Adair Grain, stored and sold ammonium nitrate, the main ingredient in the truck bomb that Timothy McVeigh detonated outside Oklahoma City’s Murrah Federal Building 18 years ago Friday.
Nearly all regulatory documents concerning West Fertilizer mention anhydrous ammonia — a relatively stable fertilizer that poses little explosion risk — but not ammonium nitrate.
Agents probing the wreckage in West are far from concluding how a small fire turned into a deadly blast and obliterated part of a small Central Texas town. It is even uncertain which chemical fueled the explosion.
But this much is clear: The explosion came after years in which state and federal agencies overlooked the potential for what some say was a preventable catastrophe.
(Read more of the story at DallasNews.com)
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