Causality 58: West Fertilizer Company

31 March, 2025

CURRENT

In the early hours of the evening on the 17th of April, 2013 in the small city of West, Texas…smoke was seen emanating from the West Fertilizer Company building. In 20 minutes there was a massive explosion that levelled the facility and its surroundings, killing 15 people and injuring hundreds more. How this came to be, represented a failure of regulations, planning and grandfathering on every level.
Duration 30 minutes and 43 seconds Direct Download

Show Notes

Related Episodes:

Formal Reports:

News Releases and Articles:

Regulations:

General Information:


Episode Gold Producers: 'r', Steven Bridle and Kellen Frodelius-Fujimoto.
Episode Silver Producers: Mitch Biegler, Shane O'Neill, Jared Roman, Katharina Will, Chad Juehring, Ian Gallagher and Jamie Russell.
Premium supporters have access to high-quality, early released episodes with a full back-catalogues of previous episodes
SUPPORT CAUSALITY PATREON APPLE PODCASTS SPOTIFY PAYPAL ME
STREAMING VALUE SUPPORT FOUNTAIN PODVERSE BREEZ PODFRIEND
CONTACT FEEDBACK REDDIT FEDIVERSE TWITTER FACEBOOK
LISTEN RSS PODFRIEND APPLE PODCASTS SPOTIFY PANDORA GOOGLE PODCASTS INSTAGRAM STITCHER IHEART RADIO TUNEIN RADIO CASTBOX FM OVERCAST POCKETCASTS PODCAST ADDICT CASTRO GAANA JIOSAAVN AMAZON YOUTUBE

People


John Chidgey

John Chidgey

John is an Electrical, Instrumentation and Control Systems Engineer, software developer, podcaster, vocal actor and runs TechDistortion and the Engineered Network. John is a Chartered Professional Engineer in both Electrical Engineering and Information, Telecommunications and Electronics Engineering (ITEE) and a semi-regular conference speaker.

John has produced and appeared on many podcasts including Pragmatic and Causality and is available for hire for Vocal Acting or advertising. He has experience and interest in HMI Design, Alarm Management, Cyber-security and Root Cause Analysis.

Described as the David Attenborough of disasters, and a Dreamy Narrator with Great Pipes by the Podfather Adam Curry.

You can find him on the Fediverse and on Twitter.