An explosion rocked the town of West, Texas and today we look at the ethics behind No One Acting… Only an act of terror such as that, which had unfolded at the Boston Marathon and by extension, attacked the City of Boston, could have over-shadowed the devastation that occurred only two days later in the tiny town of West, Texas.
On April 17, 2013, there was a fire and then an explosion at the West Fertilizer factory. Fourteen people lost their lives; 10 of them were first responders who were rushing in to control the fire. The fire-fighters had no chance. West, Texas was destroyed. There was $100 million worth of damage.
According to official documentation on file with the Environmental Protection Agency, the factory only had anhydrous ammonia in storage. While not a harmless chemical, anhydrous ammonia will typically pose hazards from its potential to inflict burns and fumes. However, the really dangerous chemical used in fertilizers, and the one that is a major concern to regulatory agencies, is ammonium nitrate, a very powerful explosive.
The first responders believed only anhydrous ammonia was at the site; they could not know, nor were they told that undocumented within the West Fertilizer warehouse sat 270 tons of ammonium nitrate. To give a sense of the magnitude of the amount of ammonium nitrate hidden away, the awful explosion in Oklahoma City was caused by “only” about one ton of the chemical.
The Blame Game
In an online CNN piece by Matt Smith (4/26/13), entitled: Records: Texas plant hadn’t told feds about explosive fertilizer, it was reported in regard to West Chemical that, “It had notified state and local emergency management officials of its stock of both (anhydrous ammonia and ammonium nitrate) in its most recent declaration of hazardous chemicals, filed in February.” However, the glaring and deadly omission was that no one told the federal regulatory agencies.
This was not West Fertilizer’s first dance. Records show that in 2006 and again in 2012, the fertilizer company was fined for its practices. West Fertilizer may have justified that reporting the storage of ammonium nitrate to state and local authorities was good enough. It suggests than over time hundreds of thousands of pounds of ammonium nitrate may have passed in and out of the plant without documentation. We will never really know, because all of the records were destroyed in the blast.
In the ethical blame game, fingers are pointing at the federal government, the State of Texas, West Fertilizer and undoubtedly, at some of the plant workers.
Political Cartoons & Other Outrage
On April 25, 2013, the Sacramento Bee newspaper came out with a political cartoon essentially pinning the blame for the explosion on Governor Rick Perry of Texas for creating a business atmosphere so lax as to allow a catastrophe of this scale to occur.
The governor and his supporters are in turn outraged that a California paper should be so insensitive as to make political hay of the explosion. The paper defended its actions by saying it was deeply respectful of the victims and that the governor should turn the spotlight on himself.
But ethically, I think that’s too easy.
Are there lax environmental regulations in the State of Texas as the newspaper cartoonist suggests? I don’t know. However the more meaningful question might be this: if state and local regulators knew of 270 tons of ammonium nitrate being “unofficially” stored and if no one came around to inspect the material, were they also not to blame?
Do the state and local authorities have a duty to contact federal inspectors? I would think so. No report mentions such dialog.
Does the federal government over-regulate? I don’t know. However, the more meaningful question is this: if West Fertilizer was cited for violations in the past, why would they not be put on some kind of watch list for poorly-run fertilizer factories? Did the feds not have a kind of ethical duty to inspect more frequently and more thoroughly? However, let us not blame the federal government for the deception. I am certain that if the feds received a call saying: “There’s 270 tons of ammonium nitrate being unsafely stored that you know nothing about,” that someone would have made the effort to check things out.
What about the management of West Fertilizer? Did they not know they had a duty to report the ammonium nitrate to federal authorities? Were they intentionally breaking the law? I will give them the benefit and again say, I don’t know.
The more meaningful question is: Why did they think it was acceptable to hide a deadly, explosive chemical?
Finally, let’s talk about factory workers. How did the employees feel about all that ammonium nitrate? I have had the pleasure of knowing many people who worked in manufacturing environments. They are not stupid people. Someone working around the chemicals must have worried about their safety.
I understand what it is like to lose a job. I wonder if someone might have been tempted to call authorities but changed their mind out of fear.
In 1996, Hillary Rodham Clinton, then the first lady of the United States, wrote a book entitled: “It Takes a Village.” I am not getting political here. Mrs. Clinton wrote about it taking a village to raise a child.
What about protecting a town from an explosion?
State and Local Authorities, the Federal Government, the management of West Fertilizer, and undoubtedly, some of the workers themselves, knew of the danger presented by the unsafe storage of 270 tons of a dangerous chemical.
No one acted.
We must only wonder about our own towns and cities. What do we know about dangerous situations and what do those around us know? Ethical considerations are not confined to case studies in textbooks. They present themselves to us at every turn. Who we are is often determined by what we do.
What happens when we elect to do nothing?
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