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| Lisa Crowder, facing camera, is hugged by a friend before a service for the First Baptist Church held in a field Sunday, April 21, 2013, four days after an explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas. Crowder's home was destroyed after a massive explosion at the West Fertilizer Co. Wednesday night that killed 14 people and injured more than 160. |
WEST, Texas
(AP) -- The First Baptist Church in the tiny Texas town where a
fertilizer plant exploded is still off-limits, so the Rev. John Crowder
put folding chairs in a hay pasture and improvised a pulpit on a truck
flatbed. At the elementary school, an official carted extra desks and
chairs into the only public school campus that's left.
This
was Sunday in West. Four days after the blast that killed 14 people and
injured 200 others, residents prayed for comfort and got ready for the
week ahead, some of them still waiting to find out when - or if - they
will be able to go back home.
"We have lost
our friends and neighbors. We lost the safety and comfort of our homes,"
said Crowder, raising his voice over the whirr of helicopters surveying
the nearby rubble from overhead. "But as scary as this is, we don't
have to be afraid."
The explosion at the West
Fertilizer Co. rocketed shrapnel across several blocks and left what
assistant state fire marshal Kelly Kirstner described Sunday as "a large
crater." A section of the flat farming town near the crater, including
Crowder's church, is still behind barricades.
One
school campus was obliterated, and on the eve of 1,500 students
returning to class for the first time since Wednesday's blast,
Superintendent Marty Crawford said the high school and middle school
could also be razed.
Nearly 70 federal and
state investigators are still trying to determine what caused the fire
that set off the explosion, Kirstner said. Authorities say there are no
signs of criminal intent.
Robert Champion, the
special agent in charge for the Dallas office of the federal Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said experts plan to enter the crater in
the next few days and start digging in search of an explanation.
"It's a slow process, but we're getting there," Champion said.
Slow
is the normal way of life in West. But the last several days for many
of its 2,800 residents have melded into an anguishing and frustrating
stretch of wait-and-hear - whether about the safety of family and
friends, or the fate of their homes.
Six
firefighters and four emergency medics were among the dead, and city
officials announced that a memorial service would be held Thursday at
Baylor University.
Professional organizations
and family and friends on Sunday identified four of the first responders
who died: brothers Doug and Robert Snokhous, who were both firefighters
with the West Volunteer Fire Department; Jerry Chapman, a firefighter
with the Abbott Volunteer Fire Department; and Kevin Sanders, who worked
with West EMS and another area volunteer fire department.
At
least one of the West volunteer firefighters who was killed, Joey
Pustejovsky, was a member of St.
Mary's Church of the Assumption that
held a solemn first Mass since the blast.
Firefighters
and emergency workers in bright yellow jackets kneeled in the pews as
the Rev. Boniface Onjefu recalled driving toward the fire after the
explosion rattled his house.
"I stopped at the
nursing home," Onjefu said. "I noticed a lot of people trapped. I
assisted. I prayed with some and held the hands of some that needed
comfort. I saw him in the eyes of everyone."
Said Onjefu, "God heard our prayers and prevented another tank from exploding."
Edi
Botello, a senior at West High School, is Catholic but stood in a
roadside pasture with friend Chelsea Hayes for the First Baptist Church
service that drew more than 100 people. "We needed this," Botello said.
They
wore gray "(hash)prayforwest" shirts that have become ubiquitous in the
town. On the night of the explosion, Botello asked his mother if Hayes,
who lived close to the plant, could come over. He said his mom still
wonders what might have been if she had said no.
"Every
time I close my eyes, all I can think about is the explosion," Botello
said. "People running around. People evacuating. There was one point I
couldn't even talk. I just stuttered."
Wendy
Castro, a clerk at a nearby Wal-Mart, was among the first allowed back
into her home, which sits on the outmost edge of the barricaded area.
Broken windows and screen doors twisted off hinges is about the worst
damage in her neighborhood.
The streets look
like a bad storm rumbled through, not the deadliest fertilizer plant
explosion since 31 were killed in Toulouse, France, in 2001. Dozens of
homes close to the blast - some of which were leveled - may not be
accessible to owners for another week or more.
Among the scorched buildings in the shadow of the plant were the town's high school and intermediate school.
Crawford
said the track team probably would have been at the high school when
the plant erupted if they hadn't stopped to eat on their way back from a
meet. On Sunday, he checked on volunteers furnishing three portable
classrooms trucked to the elementary campus. Starting Monday, the school
that usually has 350 students will be crowded with twice that.
Crawford
noticed the proximity of the schools to the fertilizer plant when he
came down from Dallas to interview for the superintendent job. "A red
flag went up," he said. Teachers are practiced in emergency drills and
there's an evacuation plan on paper in the district office.
Had the explosion happened hours earlier, Crawford is certain it would have made no difference.
"We
would have tried our best," Crawford said. "But I couldn't see us being
successful. I don't have to describe to you in graphic detail what
would have happened."
