Through tears Thursday morning, Elizabeth Perez Marquez, described the horror of the night — how a quiet evening watching television with her two daughters quickly turned into mass destruction.
They live about a mile from the epicenter of the explosion and were watching television when their house began to shake dramatically — lifting a bed and other furniture off the floor — and nearly every window in the house shattered.
Marquez said she ran outside and saw fire. She left her daughters with their grandfather and ran toward the scene.
During the next few hours, Marquez said, she tended to patients from the West Rest Haven nursing home, comforting the injured, writing their names on patients who did not have an ID and even bandaging a few of their wounds.
“We were just helping as much as we could,” said Marquez, who suffered a leg injury.
She has not yet been allowed back home.
Michelle Harwood was putting her son to bed when she heard what she thought was a loud clap of thunder.
She hurried outside her home, about five miles outside West, and quickly saw that it wasn’t a storm.
“All we saw was just this big old cloud of smoke and fire,” she said.
Soon, she said, lights and sirens were everywhere. The hours that followed were chaos.
She rushed into town, driving up and down the streets offering help after she and others were turned away from the West Rest Haven nursing home, where they first intended to go.
Harwood said she worked there as a nursing assistant until two weeks ago. She would have been working Wednesday night when the explosion destroyed part of it, she said.
A nearby park is completely gone, as is an apartment complex, she said.
Windows everywhere were busted, and people were running in the streets, she said. Harwood’s aunt was by the football field when a nearby house caught fire and blew up, she said.
She said all of the town’s four schools except the elementary school were damaged, including an intermediate school for fourth- and fifth-graders near the plant that she said was “completely gone.” West school district officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Harwood said as many of 15 friends and family lost their homes in the blast, and her cousin, who lived right across the street from the plant when it exploded, was in the hospital Thursday morning having glass removed from her body.
She’s OK, Harwood said.
Harwood and others set up a shelter at the West Church of Christ, bringing blankets, pillows and food for the few that hadn’t found a place to stay with family or friends.
She went back into town Thursday morning to see if she could help, but by then many of the roads were blocked off, she said.
“Reality hasn’t set in yet,” she said. “We’re still in shock.” ‘You just feel a deep sadness’ The parking lot of the West Auction Barn, just off Interstate 35 on the west side of town, is usually packed with cattle trailers, farmers and ranchers. Thursday, it has become information central — a spot filled with television satellite trucks and reporters, where authorities are releasing the latest details about the search for survivors and damage to the town.
Paul Hershberger, a 41-year-old church deacon and greenhouse owner, stopped here on his way to a business trip to Temple, Texas, from his home in Itasca, about 50 miles away. He wanted to see what he could do — if anything — to help the town.
“I’m sure there are a thousand people asking, “why, why, why,’” he said. “I believe that each individual will have to find their peace with Jesus Christ (about what happened).”
“You just feel a deep sadness,” he said.
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