“My strength comes from one thing,” he says, changing his tone and cadence to one unheard so far in our conversation. “And that is that I lost Nick in 2005.”

Nicholas Wayne Muska died June 7, 2005 from injuries sustained in an auto accident that his father recalls in painful detail. The teen had just finished his sophomore year of high school.

“If you lose a son…this ain't nothing…nothing, compared to that,” he says matter-of-factly. “That was a horror worse than any of this stuff. You get through that, you can get through anything.”

“Anything” in this case could include a number of things. Following the tragedy, as mayor, he had to act as the town's spokesperson, face the national media and console the families of the innocents who lost their lives; as a volunteer firefighter (yet another of his roles in West) he had to organize triage at the high school football field to treat the injured, and face the deaths of several close friends who were killed while fighting the fire when the plant exploded; and as an insurance agent, he had to help his clients and neighbors start picking up the pieces of their shattered lives.

“In a strange way, God prepared me for this moment from a long time ago,” he says. “I truly believe that.”

A town forever changed

The West Fertilizer Co. explosion registered as a small earthquake by the U.S. Geological Survey, and was felt miles from the blast site. A huge black mushroom cloud cascaded into the sky. Muska, who was less than two blocks away from the plant while rushing toward it to help fight the fire, was thrown to the ground by the shockwave. 

The destruction was massive and widespread. Homes and schools located within a stone's throw of the facility—some within just 100 yards—on the other side of railroad tracks that run through the center of downtown were wiped out. About 140 homes were laid to waste or badly damaged.

Daniel Horowitz, managing director of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, says the damage was “the worst of any chemical accident in the CSB's history.”

Damage from the blast is considered unique: Structures weren't blasted off foundations, knocked in one direction away from West Fertilizer. Rather, many homes were filled with air pressure, and then collapsed inward when the air was sucked out. Roofs of homes were rendered concave. Rafters snapped. Sheet rock, ceiling tiles and insulation littered living rooms throughout the town. Windows were blown out. Car bodies were crumpled and dented.

Mark Hanna, spokesman of the Insurance Council of Texas, says the damages include “concussion-type losses.” That is, some homes look normal from the outside but have suffered damage.

To illustrate the point, Hanna relates a conversation he had with one resident: “She had a can of beans on the kitchen counter and it exploded, but no windows of her house were broken.

“We're hearing a lot of strange stories related to the force of this blast,” adds Hanna. “It's like visiting the site of a tornado and hearing about straw going through wood. It's hard to believe.”

One month after the explosion, block after block of homes in the section of town closest to the former fertilizer facility are boarded up, awaiting demolition. Upon some of them are spray-painted messages: “Pray for West, TX,” “West Strong,” “We love you, Nanny.”

An apartment complex stands barely a shell of its former construction—the roof collapsed, the second floor buckled. A backhoe scoops up the structure's remains. Personal possessions can still be seen in living spaces and in the parking lot. Occasionally the smell of rotting food wafts into the street. Two people—Mariano C Saldivar, 57, and Judith Monroe, 65—died in these apartments.

A middle school about a half-mile away is clearly uninhabitable, its façade stained black from soot. The windows of an intermediate school remain shattered. “We had three campuses pretty much annihilated,” Muska says of West's four schools, which are covered by a $60 million blanket policy.

Not a single window is intact at a nearby nursing home—insured at $6 million—where the structural damage is beyond repair, its roof inundated with giant holes where it succumbed to the inward force. Standing outside the facility, looking inside, it's hard to believe not a single death occurred here.

Inside his office at Muska Insurance Services, a downtown agency he purchased from his father, piles of insurance claims lay strewn about his desk. One is Muska's.

The mayor's agency is busy fielding 150 claims, including more than 20 totaled homes. His agency is handling insurance for a school, the nursing home and an apartment complex.

He talks fast—jerking his body, leaning forward and back in his desk chair, rubbing his hands together, distracted momentarily by phone calls, laughing at times, it seems, so as not to cry.

When asked about the condition of his own home, his response comes in a tired laugh. “It's messed up!” he shouts. He shares photos of his house, where doors lay torn off their hinges and insulation is strewn everywhere after the ceilings were ripped open. His living room is littered with it.

“If I was sitting there when [the plant] blew up, I probably wouldn't be here,” he says. Instead, he was en route to the site of the blaze—where several of his fellow volunteer firefighters met an untimely end.

The fire call came in at 7:29 p.m., Muska relates. The city's volunteer firefighters and units were already on the scene eight minutes later. “For a volunteer department, to be there with three units in that time…” he trails off and continues recapping the timeline.

The first-responders “hadn't been there 10 minutes and figured out, 'Let's go on back' out to a safe position,” says Muska. “They were in the process of backing out. It didn't give them enough time to get out.”

At about 7:50 p.m. the plant exploded. A dozen first responders were killed.

“I lost some good friends,” he says, among them firefighter and city secretary Joey Pustejovsky Jr., 29—whom Muska says he still accidentally calls.

An insurance disaster

The West Fertilizer facility, which began operations in 1962, existed long before the city expanded in its direction. Clearly, residents were unaware of the risk at West Fertilizer as the city moved closer to it.

In the weeks following the explosion, it became apparent that while several state and federal agencies were supposed to have oversight of facilities like West Fertilizer, information on any dangerous amounts of materials contained there—if it was ever obtained—was not readily shared.

“Did we know how much? No,” Muska answers when he's asked about the amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the plant. “I don't think we had any idea. We just grew up with it out there. Nobody knew.”

Likewise, the Environmental Protection Agency says it is looking into whether the facility's operators complied with regulations, but the agency does not regulate ammonium nitrate: It isn't considered an extreme hazard as a dry fertilizer. Additionally, lawmakers in Texas have scheduled hearings to determine if existing regulations for the handling of hazardous materials need to be changed.

The Insurance Council of Texas puts insured property losses for the disaster at about $100 million, but that figure could swell as claims are adjusted. The total includes estimated insurance payments for the plant, 140 homes, an apartment complex, a middle school and a retirement center.

However, the West Fertilizer Co.—a $4 million/year operation—carried just $1 million in liability insurance and no excess or umbrella coverage. That cover was provided by United States Fire Insurance Co., a member of Morristown, N.J.-based Crum & Forster, which is part of the Fairfax Group.

The Texas Department of Insurance says four state agencies with some oversight—the Department of State Health Services, the Office of the Texas State Chemist, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Texas Department of Agriculture—do not require general liability coverage at an operation like West Fertilizer.

Jim Brzozowski, spokesman for Texas-based Hochheim Prairie Insurance, says it has received some 100 claims, 31 of which are residential total losses. The insurer has paid out more than $7 million, not counting loss- adjustment expenses.

The town has filed suit against the Adair family, which owns Adair Grain (West Fertilizer's parent company) and CF Industries, which supplied the fertilizer. The city seeks unspecified damages, alleging negligence.

Attorney Paul A. Grinke of Dallas-based McCathern PLLC predicts his clients and others involved in lawsuits against West Fertilizer will “be left holding the bag.” Grinke represents several subsidiaries of W.R. Berkley Corp. that have filed a subrogation suit also alleging negligence against West Fertilizer. The insurers cover individuals, businesses, and churches in town.

Eleanor Kitzman, the Lone Star State's former insurance commissioner, says “there's always something to learn” from a disaster like the one in West, but “Having more insurance would not have prevented this,” she adds. “This is more about public safety than cost.”

Still, Muska says the claims process is going smoothly so far, although some residents are frustrated with the tedious process of listing contents. Homeowners are also receiving a crash course in distinguishing between an actual-cash-value policy and a replacement-cost policy, he says, and there was another “small hiccup” with some commercial claims: Several insurers delayed payment while authorities ascertained whether the fire was caused by crime or a terrorist act.

After pursuing hundreds of leads and conducting even more interviews, federal and state authorities that combed the scene for a month could not determine what ignited the fire.

Muska called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to clear up the snag by issuing a statement that the incident was not, in fact, terrorism. He says the site has since been “turned back over to the owners, and their insurers and lawyers.”

Following such a catastrophe, one wonders if West will allow West Fertilizer or another facility like it to rebuild.

“It has to!” Muska responds. “We can't have a town like this without a fertilizer plant. There are farms all over, and farmers have to have their fertilizer. We can't move away from that.”

However, the mayor does acknowledge that the next facility should stand at least a couple of miles outside of West, away from the population.

“It can't be back here—not after this,” he adds. “The people would create such uproar that they'd prohibit it.”

However, one thing seems certain: The Adairs will not be involved in such a venture. Family spokesman Daniel Keeney has said the family is “not going to be in this business any longer.

“Right now they want to sincerely figure out what happened and encourage any actions that would minimize the likelihood of something like this ever happening again,” he adds.

Ultimately, the decision on what will be built and where are actually outside West's authority, as West Fertilizer was located just outside the city limit, on Stillmeadow Drive—on the other side of the railroad tracks from a playground where metal posts that once held up basketball backboards are now dramatically bent away from the former plant site. That determination will be made by McLennan County, in which the town of West is based.

Further Fallout

In the time since the initial deaths, the town has held even more funerals. More than a dozen senior citizens who lived in the West Rest Haven home—which was leveled in the blast—have died. Doctors say the stress from the event, as well as being uprooted and dispersed to surrounding nursing homes, may have been contributing factors.

In June, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) told Texas Gov. Rick Perry it will not give West the additional funds it needs to help restore its infrastructure—including a multimillion-dollar project to restore water to the affected area, and mend roads. The town's schools were counting on federal aid for temporary classroom trailers while its schools are rebuilt or repaired. Perry is appealing the FEMA denial.

Before the accident, West was on the verge of issuing a certificate of obligation to be able to afford an expansion to its sewer system. The certificate was based on water sales, 30 percent of which the city lost due to the explosion.

“We don't have a whole lot of money here,” says Muska. West has an annual budget of about $2 million, “and that's based on houses that were here [on the tax rolls]. I don't know about next year.”

West remains badly wounded—“emotionally zapped,” Muska says of his constituents. But they're not leaving. He speaks almost wistfully of attending a Little League game—a badly needed dose of normalcy.

Town leaders have passed a temporary ordinance to permit trailers in West in order to allow displaced residents a place to live. Normally, trailers are outlawed in West.

At the Pizza House of West, where old album covers hang on the walls, residents proudly sport T-shirts touting the West High School Trojans' baseball district championship—and eat alongside federal investigators.

“They are resilient—religious and strong, and they are going to be fine,” Muska firmly states in a manner not meant to convince, but to assert. “It's going to take a little time. That's what West needs.”

And as for this mayor/insurance agent?

“I have no clue where I'm getting my energy, 'cause I'm not sleeping!” he says.

“I don't know,” he adds, softer. “I just keep going.”