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Monday, April 22, 2013

No Inspection For 25 Years

Twenty-eight years have passed since the Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspected the fertilizer factory that blew up in Texas. In 1985, OSHA fined the West Chemical and Fertilizer Company $30 for a violation in the way it stored anhydrous ammonia. That's according to a records inspection conducted by the AP. OSHA has jurisdiction over more than 7 million workplaces. Most see a federal inspector only rarely. Wednesday night's explosion near Waco killed at least 15 people and injured 160. The blast destroyed the factory and many nearby homes.

4 comments:

  1. Ammonium Nitrate is used in many terrorist attacks. So much so, Afghanistan has banned AN. In 1995, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols used just over one ton to make the OK. City bomb.

    The facility was storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

    "It seems this manufacturer was willfully off the grid," Rep. Bennie Thompson, (D-MS), ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said in a statement. "This facility was known to have chemicals well above the threshold amount to be regulated under the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Act (CFATS), yet we understand that DHS did not even know the plant existed until it blew up."

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  2. so we got DHS OHSA EPA and who knows how many other government agencies paying how many thousands of do nothing people and not one has been to inspect this facility in over 30 years! And I am very sure this is not just an isolated case! wtf are all those worthless government employees doing all day?
    Do we really need them? evidently not!

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  3. 958 is right, we do not need them. There are too many duplicate and triplicate agencies all assuming that the other one is doing their job.
    We could get along with 10% of the Gov. workforce we have now and it would be easier to keep track of their accomplishments.

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  4. There are a lot of businesses in Salisbury that aren't inspected either thanks to Jim Ireton and the Salisbury City Council and they are required to be inspected. Something like the explosion in West, Texas can happen in Salisbury and it's a only a matter of time. It's not an if situation it is a when situation. The fire department and Building, Permits and Inspections are not inspecting businesses or old apartments. There will be a major loss of life in the Salisbury area before you know it. The mayor and council are negligent for ignoring these inspections because they don't want to upset the business owners.

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