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Over 160 people are reportedly in hospital, with an unknown number of fatalities, and surrounding homes and buildings leveled to the ground.”It’s like a nuclear bomb went off,” the mayor of the town of West, Tommy Muska told CNN. A local state trooper compared the annihilation in the West explosion to Iraq war scenes and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, describing the scene as an ‘unbelievable tragedy’.“I can tell you I was there, I walked through the blast area, I searched some houses earlier tonight. It was massive, just like Iraq, just like the Murrah building in Oklahoma City,” said local state trooper D.L. Wilson.Al Vanek, a city council member, reported a four block section near the explosion had been “totally decimated.”The scale of destruction has reminded eyewitnesses of other catastrophic explosions of similar magnitude, including the deadliest industrial disaster in US history, which occurred almost 66 years ago to the day. On April 16, 1947, a small fire aboard a French shipping vessel docked in the gulf port city of Texas City, Texas, triggered the detonation of 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate, the same substance used in the Adair Grain West Fertilizer Plant. Five hundred and eighty-one people perished and thousands more were injured, and the industrial boomtown of about 15,000 was left in ruins, buildings flattered and poisonous gas left in a lingering haze. Friday will mark the 18th anniversary of the most destructive home-grown act of terrorism on US soil – the Oklahoma City bombing- which killed 168, including 19 children, and injured 680 people. Timothy McVeigh used pesticides and fertilizer – also the same type – to construct his home-made explosive devices. Adair Grain’s DBA West Fertilizer Company is an anhydrous ammonia facility that produces pesticides, situated 80 miles (130 km) south of Dallas and north of the capital city, Austin. The US Chemical Safety board, which investigates industrial chemical accidents, said on its website it has deployed a ‘large investigation team’ that will arrive today.“Right now we have a tremendous amount of injuries, probably over 100 injuries at this time,” D.L. Wilson told reporters at a press conference early Thursday morning. “We do have confirmed fatalities,” but would not release any specific figures, as the area was still being searched for bodies. Comparisons have been made to the explosions of September 11, 2001, when New York City’s two tallest skyscrapers came crashing down in rapid succession. The United States Geological Survey reported the explosion as a 2.1 seismic event on the Richter scale, a blast comparable to the Twin Towers destruction, which measured 2.1 and 2.3. Europe has also experienced many ammonium-related industrial blasts. Poor mixing of ammonium sulfate and fertilizer in a plant in Oppau, Germany, caused an explosion that claimed 450 lives and destroyed 700 houses in 1921. It is assumed that poor mixing caused the fertilizer-ammonium concentration level to miss its 50:50 target and an excess of ammonium nitrate amassed, causing the explosion. In 2001, 29 people were killed at a chemical plant in southwest France, which injured hundreds and damaged nearby schools, hospitals, and homes. … Read More