Town of West, Texas, recovers after plant blast kills 14, injures 200 Officials now number the dead from a Central Texas fertilizer plant explosion at 14, while residents attempt to recover some semblance of normalcy in the 2,800-person town of West. "The devastation is immense," said Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott of West, Texas, while another official added, "There are homes flattened. The explosion occurred around 8 p.m. Wednesday and could be heard as far away as Waxahachie, a town 45 miles north. Flames spiraled into the evening sky and rained burning embers, shrapnel and debris down on frightened residents. A member of the West City Council, Al Vanek, said a four-block area around the explosion at the West Fertilizer Co. Plant was "totally decimated." The Dallas Morning News reported that among the dead were at least 11 emergency responders, three of whom were training at the time of the blast to become EMTs. They valiantly rushed to the growing smoke plume that could be seen for miles around the small community of 2,800 people. It would be, as the paper said, "their last call." "We know everyone that was there first," said Christina Rodarte, 46, a West resident of 27 years. There's no words for it. It is a small community, and everyone knows the first responders... all volunteer. Other witnesses compared the scene to that of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and authorities said the plant made materials similar to that used to fuel the bomb that tore apart that city's Murrah Federal Building. In addition to the dead, approximately 200 people were injured by the blast. A spokesman at Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center in Waco said the facility received 98 patients, including five in intensive care. Up to 75 homes were damaged, as well as an apartment complex with about 50 units that was reduced to a "skeleton," one official said. Lydia Zimmerman told KWTX-TV that she, her husband and daughter were in their garden in Bynum - 13 miles from West - when they heard multiple blasts.The USGS reported that the blast registered a magnitude 2.1, which is comparable to a minor earthquake. Meanwhile, Friday afternoon, the owner of the plant issued a statement - his first public comment since the blast. Donald Adair, owner of Adair Grain, Inc., praised the first responders and said the hearts of the company go out to everyone who has suffered. Adair also said one of the plant's employees died in the blast as a volunteer firefighter. Fifty minutes after the fire at the plant began, an explosion was reported in a frantic radio call from the scene. Authorities said there is no indication that the blast was anything but an accident. Sgt. William Patrick Swanton of the nearby Waco Police Department said he had no details on the number of people who work at the plant, which was cited by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in 2006 for failing to obtain or to qualify for a permit. Even before investigators released a confirmed number of fatalities, the names of the dead were becoming known in the town of 2,800. Franceska Perot, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said Friday that investigators were still combing through debris and would continue today. Until they're finished, she said residents cannot return to their homes and she had no timetable for completion of the agents' work. Meanwhile, the mourning already had already begun at a church service at St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church the previous night.