West Texas... Remember that?

Its been almost 2 months since our social media feeds exploded, excuse the pun, with news about the West Texas explosion. In typical fashion as all things social media once it was off our feed, it was out of our thoughts.

Not so with the Editorial titled  Demanding Answers on West Explosion in the Dallas Morning news in which we see two unlikely allies, a California Democrat and an Austin Republican working together to call for answers.

In this interesting example of bi-partisan cooperation the author calls out the, gripes and  concerns that have been made, including the failure of the Department of Homeland Security to properly identify the West Facility as potential risk that needs to be identified on the watch list. I’m inclined to agree with our authors level of confusion regarding why a facility, with a history of break-ins, holding large quantities of a known ingredient in explosive devices previously used in previous terrorist attacks wasn't on the list of an entity whose entire job was to keep our homeland… secure. /facepalm

More surprised was I to read that a California Democrat said something intelligent. Normally they spew a bunch of random jibber jabber trying to use some scare tactics to get what they want. Barbara Boxer stated that large quantities of caustic and explosive material should be documented in case of emergency and kept in a separate location far away from largely populated areas. While I wouldn't call West a densely populated area, I do agree that with all the space out there it seems interesting to keep it so close to town.

Overall I enjoyed reading this sensible editorial regarding a tragic mistake. I hope that this doesn't fall on deaf ears and that we work to fix existing problems before focusing on this week’s new cause.