Through aerial surveillance, officials have been able to determine that there is no imminent heat threat to the rail car on the back of the facility that contains about 100 tons of ammonium nitrate, according to Mayo. “If that doesn’t convey the gravity of this situation and how serious folks need to take it, I don’t know how else to verbalize that,” Mayo said. Winston-Salem is more densely populated than rural West, Texas. That compares with the 240 tons of ammonium nitrate at a West, Texas, fertilizer plant blast that killed 15 people in 2013. There were 600 tons of ammonium nitrate and 5,000 tons of finished fertilizer on the site, Winston-Salem Fire Chief Trey Mayo said Tuesday. The potential for an ammonium nitrate explosion at the plant was a top concern, fire officials said, as authorities scrambled to evacuate almost 2,500 homes within a mile of the blaze. The fire forced emergency responders to urge the evacuation of about 6,000 people, including Wake Forest University students and more than 200 inmates from a nearby prison.
WINSTON SALEM NEWS UPDATE
The department said it plans to tweet an update at 11 a.m. “The potential for an explosion is still there, and we have to be patient and just observe and keep those safe distances and those safe zones established until we get to a point where we can re-enter the site and start assessing that,” Wade said.
The fire is still burning at the plant and the one-mile evacuation radius that has affected thousands of people is ongoing, Bobby Wade, division chief of the Winston-Salem Fire Department said at a news conference early Wednesday. A fire that erupted Monday night at the Winston Weaver fertilizer plant in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, still poses a threat to the community Wednesday – and an evacuation radius remains in place, authorities said.
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