{"id":1386,"date":"2019-11-23T10:42:17","date_gmt":"2019-11-23T16:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/staging\/1734\/?p=1386"},"modified":"2019-11-23T10:42:17","modified_gmt":"2019-11-23T16:42:17","slug":"were-yesterdays-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/were-yesterdays-news\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe\u2019re Yesterday\u2019s News\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

That headline is a quote from Mayor Tommy Muska<\/a> of the town of West, Texas<\/a>, in the Dallas Morning News <\/a><\/em>of November 2<\/a>1<\/a><\/em>, regarding the Trump administration\u2019s rescission of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards for disaster prevention in chemical facilities, issued that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Aerial photo of the west explosion site taken several days after blast (4\/22\/2013). By Shane.torgerson – Aerial photo taken from my plane Previously published: Facebook and Flickr, CC BY-SA 3.0, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=25727808<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So much news passes under the bridge in one month these days\nthat readers can be forgiven if they do not immediately recall what happened in\nWest on April 17, 2013, but my guess is that many do. Or they may if I nudge\nthem by noting that the West\nFertilizer Company suffered an explosion<\/a> in a storage facility at the edge\nof this small city of 2,880. The explosion resulted from the combustion of\nammonium nitrate, a common ingredient in fertilizer, which is notorious for its\nchemical instability. Still, the facility had been there since the 1960s, but\nWest had over the years allowed a middle school, an apartment building (which\nwas destroyed), a nursing home, and other structures to be built nearby. When\nthe explosion occurred, 160 people were injured, 14 first responders (mostly\nfirefighters) were killed, and one elderly man died of a heart attack as the\nnursing home was evacuated. All that triggered a bit of soul searching about loose\nregulations at all levels of government regarding the operation of such facilities,\ntheir disproportionate environmental impact on vulnerable populations, and how\nbetter to prevent future disasters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One year later, in May 2014, I\nwrote in this blog about West<\/a> following my own involvement on an expert\npanel for the federal Chemical Safety Board<\/a>,\nwhich held a hearing in West on the anniversary of the disaster. I raised some\npertinent questions about Texas chemical and fire safety regulation that were\nof interest to the board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, however, moves were afoot in the Obama\nadministration to respond to the larger questions of chemical facility accidents.\nAccording to Earthjustice<\/a>,\nan environmental advocacy group, in the decade up to the West accident the U.S.\nhad experienced 2,200 chemical accidents at hazardous facilities, two-thirds of\nwhich caused reported harm, including 59 deaths and more than 17,000 people\ninjured, hospitalized, or seeking medical care. As a result, President Obama\nsigned on August 1, 2013, Executive\nOrder 13650<\/a>, \u201cImproving Chemical Facility Safety and Security,\u201d which set\nin motion a\nrule-making procedure at the U.S. EPA<\/a>. By July 31, 2013, EPA issued a Risk\nManagement Program request<\/a> for information in the Federal Register, proposed\nnew rules on March 14, 2016, and finalized the new rule, known for short as the\nChemical\nDisaster Rule<\/a>, on January 13, 2017, with one week remaining before\nPresident Trump took office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final rule is a bit complex, using 112 pages of the Federal\nRegister<\/em>, but among other items specifically required a \u201croot cause\nanalysis\u201d as part of an incident investigation to determine what \u201ccould have reasonably\nresulted in a catastrophic release.\u201d It would also require compliance audits\nafter reported incidents and required all facilities with certain processes to\nconduct annual notification exercises to ensure that emergency contact information\nwas complete. The overall idea was to improve effective coordination with local\nemergency responders. One problem that caused fatalities in West was a lack of\nfirefighter awareness of the precise contents and dangers of the facility that\nexploded. Thus, the requirements in the rule for field and tabletop exercises.\nFinally, the rule aimed to enhance the availability of information about chemical\nhazards in these facilities including sharing such information with local\nemergency planning committees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rest is almost entirely predictable. With little grasp\nof public policy but considerable animus toward anything with Obama\u2019s name on\nit, Trump put his appointees to work undoing his legacy. That included action\nby then EPA Administrator\nScott Pruitt<\/a> on March 16, 2017, in response to an industry-sponsored\npetition, to announce a 90-day stay of the Obama-era rules, followed by an\nextension to 20 months shortly thereafter. In the meantime, Louisiana and 10\nother states, including Texas, petitioned for reconsideration of the Obama\nrules. The delay would last until February 19, 2019. However, the U.S. Court of\nAppeals for the District of Columbia, responding to a petition from environmental\ngroups, vacated\nthe Trump rulemaking<\/a>. But now we have a final rule from the Trump EPA\nofficially rescinding the Chemical Disaster Rule. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The public information aspect of the rule became a target, with the Trump administration claiming it was responding to homeland security and emergency management experts who feared that such information would become a target for terrorists. However, it would seem to me that far more people have been affected by routine chemical accidents than by any terrorist incidents at such facilities. The U.S. EPA also noted that the rules would not have prevented the accident at West because it was ultimately determined to have been caused by arson. It is worth noting, however, that most of the first responder fatalities in that incident were more credibly the result of a lack of training and information on the potential explosiveness of the materials involved, which might have prompted greater caution and different tactics by firefighters. And none of this answers the questions I raised in my 2014 blog post about land-use practices and limitations on fire safety codes in Texas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, back to Mayor Muska, who is reportedly disappointed with\nthe outcome, and for good reason. His town has to live with the results of the\n2013 explosion, which decimated the volunteer firefighter staff and obliterated\na local business (and employer). Muska was mayor when the disaster happened and\nis now serving his fifth term. I think it is worth sharing the comments he made\nin the final two paragraphs of the Dallas Morning News <\/em>story: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe American people and\nAmerican politicians, they have a short memory,\u201d Muska said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to\nsay everything is fine, and every few years something like this is going to\nhappen again, and \u2018Oh, yeah, we need to look at this again.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re yesterday\u2019s news. It\u2019s not on anybody\u2019s minds\nas it was in \u201913 and \u201914.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jim Schwab<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That headline is a quote from Mayor Tommy Muska of the town of West, Texas, in the Dallas Morning News of November 21, regarding the Trump administration\u2019s rescission of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards for disaster prevention in chemical facilities, issued that day. So much news passes under the bridge in one month these days […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[76,440,81,14,1128,178,63,563,283,358,120,258,50],"tags":[125,1434,1439,1440,1436,1437,1443,838,1441,123,126,1438,1130,1435,227,711,1442,127,345,1433,128,1432],"class_list":["post-1386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activism","category-business","category-disaster-2","category-disasters","category-emergency-management","category-government","category-history","category-politics","category-public-health","category-public-policy","category-public-safety","category-technology","category-urban-planning","tag-ammonium-nitrate","tag-chemical-disaster-rule","tag-chemical-safety","tag-chemical-safety-board","tag-dallas-morning-news","tag-disaster-prevention","tag-earthjustice","tag-emergency-management","tag-eo-13650","tag-explosion","tag-fertilizer","tag-firefighters","tag-first-responder","tag-muska","tag-obama","tag-pruitt","tag-risk-management-program","tag-texas","tag-trump","tag-us-epa","tag-west","tag-west-fertilizer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1386"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1388,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1386\/revisions\/1388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}