The City of West, Texas is suing a fertilizer company and its suppliers for unspecified damages suffered as the result of a devastating explosion at the retailer in April.
“The city of West, literally ripped apart, suffered extensive damage to its infrastructure, real and personal property,” says the suit, field shortly after the Federal Emergency Management Agency denied a request for additional financial aid.
The explosion killed 15, injured 160 and damaged or destroyed dozens of buildings, according to the lawsuit. The suit says that the city high school, middle school, an apartment complex, a nursing care facility and more than 150 homes were either severely damaged or totally destroyed by the explosion.
The fertilizer retailer, West Fertilizer Co., stored hundreds of tons of the volatile chemical compound, ammonium nitrate, used to feed crops surrounding the small, rural city of about 2,800. A fire at the facility on April 17 caused the detonation of the chemical. Federal authorities ruled the cause of the fire “undetermined.”
West Fertilizer, a $4 million/year operation, had just $1 million of liability insurance. The city of West has more than $10 million in uninsured losses to its infrastructure and schools. Federal officials have paid or agreed to pay an estimated $25 million to the state and to affected families after the explosion. Gov. Rick Perry is appealing FEMA's latest denial of funds to the city.
The suit names Adair Grain, parent company of West Fertilizer, and its supplier, CF Industries, based in Deerfield, Ill.
CF Industries “knew of the dangers associated with the manufacture and use of ammonium nitrate and failed in their duty to exercise care commensurate with and proportionate to the combined danger of formulating, designing, manufacturing, supplying and/or marketing of ammonium nitrate,” alleges the lawsuit, filed in district court in Waco, Texas.
The supplier was allegedly in the “best position to know and understand the full nature of the danger of the product manufactured by them,” but “made no effort to determine the risk to the community into which their product was shipped.”
“Instead [CF Industries] blindly sold hundreds of tons of hazardous ammonium nitrate to West Fertilizer Company, and delivered it to a facility located within a community of people, houses, parks, schools and a nursing home,” the suit alleges.
The city also alleges West Fertilizer was negligent in the way it stored and maintained the volatile chemical compound.
The suit reveals the explosion involved 30 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer stored inside two wooden bins located within the fertilizer mixing building. An additional 100 tons stored in railcars stored nearby.
“Did we know how much? No,” West Mayor Tommy Muska tells PC360 in West a month after the catastrophe when asked about the amount of ammonium nitrate at West Fertilizer. “I don't think we had any idea.”
“We just grew up with it out there,” Muska adds. “Nobody knew.”
The fertilizer company, serving farmers in the area since 1962, existed before the city expanded in its direction, Muska says.
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