Five years after the West Fertilizer plant explosion leveled several blocks of the small Texas city, the members of West Volunteer Ambulance (WVA) have a new station and equipment, but the roster is two thirds less than what it was.
After the explosion, WVA was out of service for 10 days because much of their equipment was destroyed and almost half of its members were injured or lost their lives.
In the five years since the explosion, WVA has returned to service and serves residents of West and the surrounding areas.
“I am very proud of them,” West Volunteer Ambulance Director Tom Marek told Firehouse.com. “We’re a tight family.”
Before the explosion
Twenty-four EMT students were at the West Volunteer Ambulance station—about two blocks west of the fertilizer facility—for class that night. The class was only weeks from graduation.
When the fire was reported, WVA sent a crew to the scene to assist with firefighter rehabilitation and Kevin Sanders was riding along as an EMT student doing his observations.
Situated between the fertilizer plant and the WVA building was a two-story apartment building and on the other side was the West Rest Haven Nursing Home that had 122 residents.
As the incident grew, the on-scene crew advised Marek of the severity of the incident and to request additional resources to respond.
“Since it was a chemical-related fire, they contacted myself and Mike Reed, the assistant supervisor, and we started notifying additional crew members to respond in to help with the evacuations,” Marek said.
Officials wanted to get the residents of West Rest out of the dangerous smoke and also wanted to help evacuate the homes and apartments nearby. Marek and Reed contacted other members of WVA and had them respond to the station to assist.
“The (EMT students) actually responded to assist,” Marek said, noting that just a week earlier they had gone through mass casualty training. “They were utilized to help with evacuations of those in the hot zone and around the nursing home.”
The students and EMTs moved the residents into the reinforced hallways as they awaited further evacuation.
“Had the EMT students and volunteers not done that, there would have been many more injuries and fatalities,” Marek said.
Marek was responding to the scene with the Abbott Fire Department, where he was a volunteer firefighter. His apparatus was a half-mile to the north of the scene when the explosion happened. It lifted their pumper into the air and it broke the frame as it landed.
“I responded through the debris, in the broken fire truck,” Marek recalled. “It was like a war zone. There was debris, people laying in the road…we had to cut a path through the debris to drive through.”
The immediate aftermath
Marek responded to the initial staging area, located at the nursing home, and Mayor Tommy Muska ordered Marek, who was one of the city’s disaster managers, to take over command of the scene.
“The mayor approached me and told me to get a handle on what was going on. On what resources were coming in and what we needed to do.” Marek stayed at the command post for over 17 hours, but was relieved by McLennan County Emergency Operations Officer Frank Patterson.
Marek was then assigned to coordinate the search and rescue branch while Reed took over the medical branch and watched over triage and treatment areas.
Following the blast, the injured were removed to the high school football field where the new triage area was set up a few blocks away. “It was the only place that had lights,” Marek recalled, noting that the north side of West was without power.
When word got out that West needed help, Marek said “52 ambulances were inbound with the first 30 to 40 minutes, but we didn’t need all of them.”
Doctors and nurses who live in the area rushed to the triage area to assist and Marek said they already had a working relationship with many of them, so they were able to triage and treat many of the people at the football field.
A dramatic change in weather pushed the smoke toward the football field and emergency crews were again forced to move patient to a new area at the city’s community center.
WVA out of service
The numbers surrounding West Volunteer Ambulance are hard to grasp.
Four EMT students—Perry Calvin, Jerry Chapman, Cyrus Reed and Kevin Sanders—were killed in the explosion and 19 WVA members were injured.
Marek said their injuries ranged from minor, including cuts and bruises, to several who were critically injured and required surgeries.
“Their hearts were in helping others,” Marek said. “They were right there.”
While the beams of the one-story WVA station remained intact, the metal structure was rendered uninhabitable. Two ambulances were destroyed in the explosion and a third one suffered moderate damage, Marek said.
“We had to shut down for approximately a week and a half,” he said. “We were still dealing with the aftermath.”
Since the building was destroyed, Marek and Reed set up a temporary station in a construction trailer located near the fire station.
“At 10 days it was 20 volunteers who were keeping the system going,” Marek said. “Unfortunately they were all devastated by the trauma of losing both of fire and EMS friends.”
In the weeks following the explosion, donations poured into the city. Fire apparatus were donated to the West Volunteer Fire Department and an ambulance was donated to WVA. Since WVA is a non-profit organization and not part of the city itself, funding became a challenge as WVA worked to rebuild.
“We weren’t fortunate enough to receive fire funds or resources given to the rest of the city,” Marek said. “Many people didn’t realize we were self-funded.”
While they receive some money from the city, and from the organization that once funded the now-shuttered West Hospital, they relied on donations and insurance money to rebuild.
“That’s one thing West Ambulance has strived for...everything we had, even the apparatus, we paid for it. We made sure that everything was bought and paid for,” Marek said. “We thought there was potential we’d be able to off-set what was lost (with insurance monies), but we had to settle for pennies instead of dollars.”
The 14-year-old WVA station was knocked down, but the slab was found to be safe and intact and within 30 days the rebuilding process started.
Eleven months after the deadly blast, WVA moved back into their station, which closely mimicked the previous station. The one-story building, which was paid for with insurance monies, features three apparatus bays, a training room, a living area and two sleeping quarters.
“Through donations, and what was left with our savings, we purchased everything we needed for inside the building,” Marek said.
“We were the first commercial business open in the explosion zone at 11 months,” Marek said. Dozens of homes have been rebuilt or restored, but the areas occupied by the nursing home and apartments remain vacant lots.
Right now they have three front-line ambulances and a reserve ambulance, plus an all-terrain vehicle.
Remembering those who died
When you walk into the training room, the first thing you see is a memorial to the four members of West Ambulance who died in the explosion.
WVA member Russell Lebkowski, who was an EMT student in the class with those who died, wrote “For your Courage and Sacrifice" on the the two-tone blue wall.
Local photographer Sheri Hemrick compiled portraits of the fallen members and put together four collages that showed Calvin, Chapman, Reed and Sanders with family, friends or in their firefighting gear.
"We Thank You" and "Never Forgotten" are emblazoned on the wall, along with the date of the explosion, and a cross.
West Volunteer Ambulance today
West EMS, one of only a few fully volunteer EMS squads in the state, had 64 volunteers in April 2013. Five years later, they only have 22 volunteers.
“We went backwards compared to where we were prior to the explosion,” Marek said. “We had a two-year rebirth while rebuilding the city, but a lot of our volunteers were career fire and EMS elsewhere and they left. I don’t know if they were just too shook up and didn’t want to be here.”
Marek and Reed are the only full-time employees and they are responsible for all of the agency’s administration duties, plus staffing the ambulance from 7 a.m. – 5 p.m. Monday to Friday.
Over the last few years, Marek said the West fire, police and ambulance groups meet weekly to discuss what’s going on in the city.
Finances remain tight for WVA and they continue to raise money by teaching CPR classes and presenting health education programs around the community.
“We do more health-related fundraising so we stay committed to the health of our community,” Marek said.
They city provides for some fuel costs because WVA crews handle home visits for the elderly and staff athletic events at the schools.
Last year, crews responded to 860 emergencies, plus dozens of home visits and other duties.
“The hardship was that the media coverage was focused on the community and not on the 12 firefighters and EMS members who lost their lives or their stories,” Marek said. “I can tell you personally, of the four I lost, I wish their stories would have been told.”
If you’re interested in helping West Volunteer Ambulance, you can contact them at [email protected] or:
West Volunteer Ambulance
PO Box 461
West, TX 76691
