Texas Fertilizer explosion: at least 70 dead

s all a matterof scale Chai. Many eastern states could be covered entirely by Big Bend or Delaware Basin Country.The Delaware Basin country is bigger than Massachussets (however the **** they spell it), and the Hill country is bigger than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. SO I know Texas and Alsaka are measured in "Days across" not miles but thats why we need to know youre there for us.

Agreed izzie, thank you.

Now, this is just the curmudgeon in me, but I'd like to address this "strength and courage" thing for a moment.

Ok, I can feel the heat blast gathering from others to spew my way, but being a troublemaker, I'll say it anyway.

For the average Bostonian, one of 625,000 plus people, who didn't know, or before this moment, didn't care about any of the injured killed....What exactly type of strength and courage have you displayed in the past week?

You were inconvenienced for a day when you couldn't leave your house. You watched on TV while this man hunt went on and you sipped coffee, drank a beer, ate a sandwich, or tackled that cleaning/repair job you put off. Maybe you gripped to everyone you knew, and they gripped to you that you couldn't leave your house.
Maybe on the route you take to and from your daily comings and goings you
had to change your schedule.
During all this, the media was feeding to you what wonder people you were, by the pure chance that you lived somewhere where 2 guys set off a bomb, and you were somehow managing to breathe in and out.

What? Some of you had to now explain to your children how bad things happen? That's sorta your job anyway. More than likely you had to listen to your kids go on how they wanted to go outside.

I was listening to NPR when they called off the "stay at home" thing, and they were asking some woman if she intended to go outside. Like this was some big thing. She went on about how she just didn't know if she should, but "my daughter is bugging me about us taking her out to dinner." Give me a break. She should be glad she has the money to afford to take her kid out.
Courage madam, courage, you'll get through this.

Were people literally afraid to step out their doors after the all clear, like they thought someone was lurking in the bushes ready to blow them up?

I think it's a little overstated calling the owner of the boat where the suspect was hiding "a hero"
He noticed a gap in the tarp, some blood, called 911.
He did the right thing, that's all.

Then, when the 2nd guy is caught you get to stand in the street and wave your arms because you're heros and the bad guy was caught, and now you can go back inside and watch American Idol.

Sometimes people (myself included) are just so ******* self important and full of themselves.

I'll always be there for you farmerman.

You can take that to the bank.

can't speak to the coverage in the U.S., but our national radio news is still covering West, Texas as well as Boston.

what really struck me about the accident in West was that everybody in town would have known at least a few of the dead and injured. Boston's more of a six degrees of separation thing for most.

Yeah beth, that would happen if there's only 3000 of you living there, and the fertilizer plant is in town, where the other business and homes, where people were working at, or living in is where the action went on.
Small town people wear multiple hats, you tend to know people as being more than one thing.

I don't know why that would surprise you, that people knew more than one of the injured/killed.

The pharmacist in town has the drug store not that far, but he had to run home during this to get, I don't know, a key or something he needed, something pertaining to getting medical supplies. His house was a quarter of a mile from the explosion. He said all the front windows were blasted in (not surprising), but when he ran in the house he saw that all the ceilings had fallen down. The roof was still there, just the ceilings.

Now there's a hero. Running towards where there could have been more explosions, to go into a house in that condition, weighing the results over the consequences.

Of course, the town was getting some immediate help from other places.

I didn't say it surprised me.

What do you mean then, by struck you?

Why would that strike you as anything other than what would be expected?

Forget it. There's no point in trying to agree with you.

I'm not trying to disagree with you.

I'm trying to find out what you mean.

I thought the thread had become a curse Texas fest, so I quit reading. Glad to see it is getting back on track. I keep being surprised that the dead have not been accurately counted after so much time.

That surprises me too.

I mean, you'd think that anyone who lives or works in the town would have immediately let someone, anyone know they are alive.

I remember hearing something to the effect that maybe people there went to stay with someone else, if their home was destroyed.

Well, what kind of sense does that make? Like where ever they went, they're keeping it a secret? Shhh....Ed, don't tell anyone I'm staying in your back bedroom.

Albeit, and I know this happens, sometimes people who want to move on or get away from their current situation use something like this to make good their escape, but I don't think that's common.

I think anyone who hasn't been accounted for by now could reasonably be considered blown or burned up.

I hope they aren't all dead. I think about sixty are uncounted.

Really? How did you reach that conclusion?

By watching channel 11 on local TV.

I'm sorry, I mean't the conclusion that this was turning into a Texas Hate fest.

There are plenty of people who reflexively think poorly of Texas and Texans, but I don't see any of them here.

I saw posts putting down much of Texas and began avoiding the thread. I hate to keep mentioning it, because it has so little to do with the topic of the thread.

OK - Didn't see them myself (other than some comments about scenery).

I think ehBeth means an awareness of how much everyone in the surrounding area is affected by this, unlike Boston where most people can get on with their day to day lives. Empathy that there is so much destruction and so many people will not be able to bounce back as quickly, as a lot of homes and businesses have been destroyed. That's what struck me too.

Where'all is Chiner? Is is part of 'Merica?