The Mayor of the tiny town of West, Texas says as many as forty people were killed when a fertilizer caught fire and exploded with enough force to damage or destroy everything within a half-mile (800 m) radius.

(Video of the blast is here, here, here, and the mushroom cloud captured from a safe distance is here)

Mayor Tommy Muska said, “We are out there searching the rubble, looking in each and every house. We are trying to locate each and every citizen,” basing his high body count on the citizens he cannot account for.

The West Fertilizer plant sat along the north side of town, separated from a playground by only a single set of train tracks.  As the fire spread, people gathered nearly with the cellphone cameras capturing the moment the volatile ammonium nitrate exploded with enough force to register magnitude 2.1 on the government’s seismographs.

Texas is notorious for its “business friendly” property zoning rules.  Within a few hundred meters of the blast was an elementary school, a high school, a retirement home, a fully occupied apartment building, a gas station, and the town hospital.  Most of these structures were reduced to piles of wood.

West is also famous for its Czech-American community, and the Czech bakery is a favorite stop for travelers on the interstate highway who crave Kolaches.  Despite being damaged in the blast, the owners did not close and donated dozens of bottles of water to rescue screws.