The Daily Mail 22 April 2013 at 23:30
Recordings from the night reveal how the calls quickly moved
from brief reports of smoke to frantic pleas for more emergency responders.
Fraught 911 recordings have revealed the aftermath of the
massive explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant last week, as residents plea for
help, scramble for answers and beg for more medical staff.
When the first call came in, it was just a fire. Smoke was
coming from West Fertilizer Co. and an alarm was sounding, so a woman at a park
just across the railroad tracks called 911. She was calm and matter of fact.
The dispatcher responded in kind: 'OK, I'm going to get them to put out the
fire.'
It was 7:29 p.m. April 17, and the last routine moment in
West, Texas, since.
Within 20 minutes, the park was strewn with two-foot chunks
of concrete from the exploded fertilizer plant. The apartment complex behind it
was ripped apart by the wave of energy that climbed the railroad bed and
slammed into the building, shredding its roof and blowing out windows.
Dispatchers were swamped with hysterical reports. Nearly all
50 calls that flooded in during the next 35 minutes came from within a mile of
the plant. Some knew what happened, others knew only that windows had suddenly
shattered on them and houses several blocks from the site were on fire.
Chilling: A chemical trailer sits among the remains of a
fertilizer plant burning after the explosion last week
Chilling: A chemical trailer sits among the remains of a
fertilizer plant burning after the explosion last week
Aid: 911 calls reveal the panic of emergency responders that
they are running out of people to help them
Aid: 911 calls reveal the panic of emergency responders that
they are running out of people to help them
Firefighters and EMTs would account for 10 of 14 people
killed, and more than 200 people in the town of 2,800 would be counted as
injured.
State and federal investigators continued combing the site
Monday looking for the cause of the blast so powerful it registered as small
earthquake. They had found the center of the explosion a day earlier, but not
the fire's starting point.
Recordings show fears ran rampant among those who called 911
last Wednesday night.
One woman who glanced outside and saw the mushroom cloud
that erupted from the blast could be heard shouting: 'Get out of the house. Get
out,' to those around her. 'There's a freaking cloud. Look at that!'
An off-duty firefighter concerned about the air called a
second time to say he was leaving with his family. A man wearing an ankle
monitor told a dispatcher as he drove that he was fleeing the chemicals.
Investigators later assured residents the town's air was not
toxic.
Calls from those further away relate terror of the unknown.
Dispatchers asked callers to take deep breaths and repeat the unintelligible.
'My ambulance station just completely exploded! I need as
many trucks as you can send this way'
EMS supervisor, 911 call
'Something happened out here,' a crying 83-year-old woman
tells the operator, her voice quavering. 'Our house exploded or something.
There was a big explosion and then our house is just destroyed.
'We're all ok, but my God, what has happened?' she said.
'I'm scared to death.'
Residents and dispatchers soon realized the enormity of the
situation. One woman who called about a house burning on her street was asked
if she lived close to the fertilizer plant. But she said she was several blocks
away.
Less than five minutes after the first explosion call,
dispatchers also knew West's own emergency resources were severely hampered.
'Listen to me, my ambulance station just completely
exploded,' a West EMS supervisor can be heard saying on one call. 'I've got a
nursing home and an ambulance station and an air evac. I need as many ...
trucks as you can send this way.'
'The roof completely collapsed on the building. I'm doing a
walk through now. I think we got everybody out,' he said. 'I don't have radio
communications, I have lost my repeater.'
The blast left the city with one functioning ambulance.
An EMT training class was in the building that evening. The
trainees already had passed their practical exam, so they left the class to go
help, said Dr. George Smith, West EMS's medical director.
Four of the 18 in that class died. 'Every one of them were
friends of mine,' Smith said.
Smith now carries a photo on his phone that shows a huge
pile of debris, part of what used to be the West Rest Haven nursing home, where
he also is medical director. The home sat between the ambulance building and
the fertilizer plant.
'I was under that,' Smith said of the collapsed roof in the
photo. His face bears scrapes and scratches from the night.
Smith and others managed to get all of the about 130
residents out. One man later died, not from injuries but his existing medical
conditions, Smith said.
A woman whose mother-in-law was a resident told a 911
dispatcher they needed flashlights to help find the injured.
'We've got old people, they're bleeding, they've got glass,'
she said. 'This rest home is completely demolished.'
Injured residents of an assisted living facility next door
were moved to the front porch.
'My people are at the assisted living, three workers and my
11 residents and they're all bleeding,' another 911 caller said. 'They're
trying to take care of the bleeding but nobody has any medical attention over
there right now.'
On the mend: Five days after the fertilizer plant explosion,
a flag flies from a damaged home as the damaged West Intermediate School is
seen in the distance
One man who called twice from about a 1/2-mile south of the
plant said he had dug three women out of a collapsed house.
'Hurry, they're bleeding bad,' he said.
Help was coming, but from a distance. Dispatchers told
callers they were bringing in fire trucks from elsewhere. One dispatcher had
the pleasant surprise of being offered medical professionals.
'I have several people that are willing to go help, medical
personnel, nurses and such, do you all still need help?' one woman offered.
'Can they go help with the triage and such?'
'That would be perfect,' the dispatcher said. 'We need as
many medical people as we can get.'
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