West expected to get state aid to rebuild ailing infrastructure after explosion [View all]

[TexasTowelie]

In January, three months before the members of West’s volunteer fire department would face the biggest conflagration they had ever seen, their town’s last working water well conked out.

So when the local fertilizer plant caught fire April 17, West had only half its normal supply of water, every drop piped from Lake Waco 15 miles away.

Even so, that fire — which caused tons of ammonium nitrate to detonate — apparently spread too fast to put West’s crippled water system to the test. Equipped with a single tanker truck that would have taken only minutes to drain, firefighters were still trying to hook up to the nearest water hydrant three blocks away when the plant blew up, said Mayor Tommy Muska.

But Muska believes sufficient water could have made a difference in what happened next, when flames thrown by the blast eventually destroyed a school and several houses.

More at http://www.statesman.com/news/news/west-expected-to-get-state-aid-to-rebuild-ailing-i/nYZk2/ .