Information on the town - Wikipedia, the town’s own web site.
“The massive explosion at a fertilizer plant near Waco, Texas, must have been caused by ammonium nitrate, and couldn’t have gone off without negligence by the facility’s employees, chemists who talked to RT about the incident agree.”
Here are some ammonium nitrate disasters:
Can you ask what they should have been using to put the fire out? As I heard, they were fighting a fire first, and then it exploded. If the firefighters were using water to put out the original fire, was that a big oops?
FTR, West, TX is not in west Texas. 
The tank was probably pressurized and if it got hot enough it would explode without any combustion necessary. On top of that I’d go with what a chemist says.
From the wiki:
I don’t know if they were set up to produce ammonium nitrate from anhydrous ammonia or not, but the Google Map images show regular old anhydrous trailers (see Billie Sol Estes) and a small facility. A plant that is capable of manufacturing ammonium nitrate would have a little more than a couple of tanks and some tin buildings. Process towers, piping, cooling towers, that sort of thing.
More like this, a picture of an ammonium nitrate plant.
There might have been some stored there or something, but I just don’t see the facility to manufacture.
I dated a Baylor girl for a while. They always said “West comma Texas” to distinguish it from West Texas.
BTW, kolaches rock!
Seconded. The anhydrous operation there looks like what you’d find in a farm town, not a manufacturing facility.
I haven’t looked through all the links already posted, but this is the best video I’ve seen of the actual blast, and no, it’s not the one with the guy and his daughter in the car, where the camera leaves the blast almost immediately. In this one, you can clearly see the explosion, then shockwave, then the camera leaves the explosion as the person briefly (and rightfully) panics/gets blown back, then it returns to show the growing smoke-cloud.
Here’s a fairly decent map of where it happened, and roughly what the blast effects might have been.
The main unknown is just how big of a bang it was.
The facility basically blended and sold fertilizer to local farmers; it was not a manufacturer. There are thousands of these type facilities across the country. Apparently only 2% of nitrogen fertilizer now comes from ammonium nitrate. Ammonium nitrate is popular with certain types of crops and certain types of soil conditions.
Here is a later article. It sounds like something else caught on fire; then when the fire got hot enough the ammonium nitrate exploded.
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/west-explosion/headlines/20130430-experts-say-west-explosion-has-all-hallmarks-of-ammonium-nitrate-as-fuel.ece
But has anyone read any really good explanations of what happened? It sounds like none of the investigators is leaking information.
Because nobody seems to have posted about it here, the Czech Republic decided to send money to assist in the rebuilding of West, due to the large ethnic Czech population living in the town.
too much there and not much there.
Texas plant that blew up carried $1M policy
http://news.yahoo.com/texas-plant-blew-carried-1m-policy-204535308.html
That sells me! I’m gonna relocate all my most dangerous shit to Texas, where won’t be any of that onerous burden on businessmen that the Commies call “safety regulations”.
News reports say that the plant had regular thefts. Meth cookers needed the anhydrous ammonia. It seems likely a spill led to the fire and soon after the explosion.
Actually proving an exact cause may take awhile.
Has anyone seen any good good discussions published in firefighting or chemical industry forums?
If you want to follow the newspaper discussions the Waco and Dallas newspapers seem to have the best coverage:
http://wacotrib.com/news/west_explosion/
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/west-explosion/
— Ammonium nitrate stored at a fertilizer plant here was probably the trigger for a deadly and destructive explosion after fire broke out in the same building, authorities said Monday.
…
“All indications are leading to that,” Rachel Moreno, a spokeswoman for the State Fire Marshal’s Office, told The News.
Fire officials are still trying to determine the cause and original location of the fire within the building, Moreno said.
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/west-explosion/headlines/20130506-investigators-blame-ammonium-nitrate-in-massive-west-explosion.ece
Another post about the man arrested:
" Hours after a West paramedic was arrested for possessing a destructive device Friday, the Texas Rangers and McLennan County Sheriff’s office launched a criminal investigation into the fatal fertilizer plant explosion that he responded to last month.
But authorities have yet to say whether the arrest of 31-year-old Bryce Reed was related to the April 17 explosion at West Fertilizer Co. that killed 15 people, including 12 men who were responding to the fire… Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Frazier would not release further details about the charge.
The State Fire Marshal’s office has not determined – or ruled out – whether the fire was a criminal act or accidental. The agency also has not determined the cause of the fire that preceded the deadly explosion, believed to have been fueled largely by ammonium nitrate kept at the plant. Rachel Moreno, a spokeswoman for the agency, said Friday she could not comment on Reed’s arrest."
Apparently the emergency responder who was arrested had given someone else the parts of a pipe bomb to keep for him. Here is the criminal complaint:
They are going to have a press conference in less than an hour (4 pm Central time), but the preliminary info is:
" Investigators trying to determine the cause of the deadly blast at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, have not ruled out criminal activity. Nor have they settled on a cause, according to a government official familiar with the findings, scheduled for release Thursday afternoon.
The investigation has identified three possible sources of ignition: a golf cart that apparently had been subject to a recall, a secondary electrical system, or an intentional, criminal act."