Senate Committee to Hold Hearing on West Explosion

A Senate committee is set to hold a hearing on the events that led up to the fertilizer plant explosion in West, TX in April.

Senators will review reports from the Enviromental Protection Agency and the U.S. Chemical Safety Board in connection with the blast that killed 15 people.

“This is going to be very interesting. We’ll find out why they think this happened,” California Senator Barbara Boxer, who chairs the Enviromental and Public Works Committee, told a newspaper.

Federal and state investigators have ruled the cause of the deadly blast as "undetermined."

Texas State Fire Marshal Chris Connealy said a ruling of undetermined is made when the cause "cannot be proven to an acceptable level of certainty."

"This could be due to insufficient information or if multiple causes could not be eliminated," he said.

In May, the chairman of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board sent a letter to Boxer contending that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives effectively barred a the safety panel from the site of the plant blast.