Twelve people were confirmed dead Friday as rescue teams continued searching for survivors in the charred and destroyed homes of a small Texas town following a explosion at a fertilizer plant, DPA reported.
Mayor Tommy Muska said 10 of the dead were first responders who had rushed to extinguish a large fire at the plant in the town of West, Texas, and were caught in the massive blast. The explosion late Wednesday that sent shock waves in a radius of 80 kilometres also claimed the lives of two residents of nearby homes.
The search underway is being conducted slowly and methodically in the hope of finding anyone trapped in the homes and businesses in the town with a population of about 2,400.
More than 160 injured people were taken to hospitals and more than 1,000 people had to be evacuated, including residents of a nearby nursing and retirement home, reports said.
The powerful blast occurred shortly before 8 pm Wednesday (0100 GMT Thursday) at the fertilizer plant. By Thursday morning the fire was mostly extinguished, and the light of day revealed the extent of devastation over a wide area.
The explosion sent a 30-metre wide fireball into the sky when it ripped through the West Fertilizer Plant, some 100 kilometres south of Dallas. Witnesses compared it to an atomic bomb.
State officials started an investigation into what sparked the explosion amid questions about how the firefighters handled the initial blaze, which involved anhydrous ammonia stored at the plant.
Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas division of emergency management at the Department of Public Safety, told the Dallas Morning News that fighting a fire involving ammonium nitrate, used in making fertilizer, with water is a known hazard.
Ammonium nitrate is a key ingredient in explosives, such as roadside bombs planted by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.