Investigators are still trying to figure out what caused a West, Texas, fertilizer plant to explode. The incident killed 14 people. Comments from Facebook:

More regulations needed?

Ethical companies put the safety of their employees and local community as the first priority. They spend a lot of time determining the worst case scenarios, and then spend the money to put in multiple layers of protection to mitigate the risk.

Besides being the ethical and moral thing to do, it also makes good business sense (because a disaster such as this is financially devastating, too).

You'd hope businesses would do this for the ethical reasons, but if not, at least they should do it for the financial ones, so in the end the people are protected.

Paul Jarosz

It seems Texas has a history of these industrial accidents — deadly fires and explosions — and nothing gets done about it. Yet the lawmakers down there often complain about government regulation and intrusion into American businesses.

When are they going to review their zoning laws for hazardous materials and put priority on protecting their residents' lives? Regulation is not a bad word when an industry produces material that places lives at risk.

Michael Bates

If you want to give up your rights, that's fine, but don't try to push more regulations on me as a Texan. Yes, what happened at the fertilizer plant is sad. But you don't build a residential area around a potential bomb, just like you wouldn't try to build a house on quick sand.

If you want to blame anyone for this, how about the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Its last visit out there was in 1985.

Martin Medina

Unsafe development

You want to blame someone, blame the developers, politicians and planners who never think about the surrounding area where they are building. Texas may be lax, but this goes on everywhere.

Mike Boothe

People trust that developers will build safe homes in safe areas. Without zoning they will build anywhere they can get the cheapest land. In the West explosion aftermath, someone should go to jail and be fined for killing people.

James Rubner

I also wonder what the security levels are like at these fertilizer plants.

If an accident can cause this kind of catastrophic destruction, what might a deliberate attack do?

Rich Barnes

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