A beautiful town where the Czech heritage brings forth good food and great hospitality literally blew up the other night. Seems a fertilizer plant was there and developers built a town around it. Anyway, the local high school was essentially destroyed. So, long story short, a neighboring community has put the football rivalry aside and invited the surviving school kids to come learn in their halls. This is Texas we're talking about. Where football is paramount.
I can't help but feel refreshed by this. I had to share.
I wonder if the local farmers need any trucks?

 

Hey Horvaths,
My son is up at Baylor in Waco & he was outside at
the time of the explosion 20 miles away in West, Tx.
He called me pretty shook up - I don't think he'd experienced
anything quite like that. I'm not even sure they know how many people are casualties. That convenience store right on the interstate with the Czech Bakery is lucky they were on the other side of the hill from that plant.

Ben in Austin
1950 F1

 

A favorite stop of mine is/was the Czech-American Restuarant. I drove to/from Austin almost every week for work over a period of about a year. I scheduled my drive around their hours. Off the highway, it was a family place frequented by locals and a few in-the-know others. I imagine that they took quite a hit.

Well, in a state where the football budget is publicly more important than the education budget (sometimes literally), I thought that overcoming the obvious rivalry to give a hand is a mighty grand act.

 

Yes, in many other places this would surprise me but people familiar with Texas and Texans will know that this is in their DNA. The US of A has found both comfort and resolve as it has watched Texans deal with adversity. Ths will be yet another time on the world stage. Sorry to hear of the devastation and loss of life.

 

The devestation in West is many times worse than the Boston marathon bombing , More lives lost , more devestation . You woudn't know that by listening to the lamestream news .

 

A nursing home, school, houses, and apartment complex completely destroyed! Very sad, and terrible for West, Tx. Many people are already helping from all over Texas and some from other states too. In times of disaster people really come together and forget any differences. The aftermath of Ike here in Houston a few years ago was the first time I had met many of my neighbors as we all pitched in to help the people who lost everything. And did anybody happen to see the story of the couple from Austin who witnessed both the Boston Marathon and the West Texas explosion? He ran in the marathon and finished just ahead of the bombs while his wife was in the stands that blew up. The lady next to her lost a leg, she escaped injury but helped others. They left, flew to Dallas, and drove from Dallas to Austin. As they neared West they noticed a huge fire and moments later their car shook from the explosion. What are the odds of that?
Good luck to the people of West and our hearts are out to all the families of the dead and missing.

 

Just saw that their water system is down, too