<iframe src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-MR922DG" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden"></iframe>

Most Recent in Politics:

1Shelter Director Ruben Garcia on How Struggling Nonprofits Carry the Load of the Migrant ‘Crisis’

2The System Works for Attorney General Ken Paxton. Again.

3Is the Texas House Violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by Refusing to Caption Legislative Hearings?

4The Cost of Carve-Outs

5Yet Another Rural Texas Hospital is in Jeopardy After Anti-Tax Activists Kill Funding Proposal

6Meet Maria Espinoza, the Texan Elevating ‘Angel Moms’ to the National Stage

Most Recent in Environment:

1Nearly 500,000 Texans Live in Communities with Contaminated Groundwater. Lawmakers Aren’t Doing Much About It.

2‘All it Took was 25 Years’: Legislature Ponies Up Cash for Underfunded Texas Parks

3Carbon Sequestration Isn’t The Long-Term Solution. Is it a Short-Term One?

4Report: Oil and Gas Producers May Be Pushing the Permian Basin Past Federal Air Quality Limits

5The EPA Told Texas to Crack Down on Dangerous Air Emissions in 2015. The State Never Did, and Now It Won’t Have to.

6The Flood Next Time

Most Recent in Border:

1Shelter Director Ruben Garcia on How Struggling Nonprofits Carry the Load of the Migrant ‘Crisis’

2In the Rio Grande Valley, a Fight to Bring Back NPR

3Meet Maria Espinoza, the Texan Elevating ‘Angel Moms’ to the National Stage

4Democrats Finally Play Hardball on the Border Wall

5Washington Crossing the Rio Grande

6With Proposed Tariffs on Mexico, Trump Attacks Texas

Most Recent in Criminal Justice:

1The System Works for Attorney General Ken Paxton. Again.

2Death Penalty Reform Bill Gets Watered Down to ‘Nothing’ Before Passing Senate

3With a Bizarre Assist by Democrats, Police Groups Kill Bill to Limit Arrests for Fine-Only Offenses

5‘The Penal System Today is Slavery’: Lawmakers Finally Start to Talk About Unpaid Labor in Texas Prisons

6Four Years Later, Sandra Bland’s Arrest Continues to Sow Distrust in Law Enforcement

Most Recent in Education:

1The Cost of Carve-Outs

2Texas Legislature Improves Suicide Prevention in Schools, but Makes Little Progress for Adults

3Texas House Considers Free College For Students Experiencing Homelessness

4‘The Wolf is in the Henhouse’

5‘We’re Not Stupid’: Texas Teachers Take on Dan Patrick and the Legislature over Dismal Education Funding

6In Violation of Texas Law, Most High Schools Aren’t Giving Students the Chance to Register to Vote

Most Recent in Health Care:

1Yet Another Rural Texas Hospital is in Jeopardy After Anti-Tax Activists Kill Funding Proposal

2Texas Legislature Improves Suicide Prevention in Schools, but Makes Little Progress for Adults

3Inside Texas’ Failed Experiment to Replace Planned Parenthood with an Anti-Abortion Group

5Texans with Disabilities are Struggling to Find Health Care Attendants. Lawmakers Didn’t Do Much to Help.

6Texas Legislature Set to (Slightly) Expand Medical Marijuana Access

Most Recent in The Interview:

2The Interview: Mass Resistance

3Meet Jim Allison, Texas’ Newest Nobel Laureate (and Three-Time Cancer Survivor)

4Dolores Huerta is Still Knocking on Doors and Registering Voters at 88

5The Interview: Veronica Escobar is Poised to Make History

6Redistricting Guru Michael Li on Texas’ Gerrymandered Maps

Most Recent in Books:

1Announcing the Ninth Annual Texas Observer Short Story Contest

2‘Human Matter’ Dredges up the Dark History of the Guatemalan Civil War

3With Sprawl and Serial Killers, Houston Noir Packs a Mean Punch

4When Crossing Over Becomes a Deadly Game

5Beasts of the Border

6Invasive Species Have Reshaped Texas. Now What?

Most Recent in Features:

1Washington Crossing the Rio Grande

2Ghosts of the Baker Hotel

3At Home in the World

4Plight at the Museum

5The Texas Observer’s Best Features of 2018

6East Texas Photographer Captures 50 Years of Haunting, Ordinary Magic

Most Recent in Essay:

1Lost in Limbo in the Hays County Jail

2The Trouble with Yoga

3Heads in the Mud

4The Day the Windows Shook

5Women’s Work

6I Grew Up on the Texas-Mexico Border, but Now I Barely Recognize It

Most Recent in Eye on Texas:

1Eye on Texas: Loren Elliott

2Eye on Texas: Charlotte Moore

3Eye on Texas: ‘My Joyful Dance’

4Eye on Texas: Ghosts of the City

5Eye on Texas: Fiesta Protesta

6Eye on Texas: Remembering Draylen Mason

Most Recent in Poetry:

1Remembering W.S. Merwin, Honorary Texan

2Lost in Limbo in the Hays County Jail

3Houston Poet Analicia Sotelo’s Debut Smashes Latino Stereotypes

4Parallel Planes

6Poem: ‘Resistance’

Tag Archives: West

by Priscila Mosqueda

Report: Firefighter Deaths at West Fertilizer Plant Disaster Could Have Been Prevented

Fri, May 16, 2014 |

The State Fire Marhsal's Office reports that the deaths of 10 volunteer firefighters who perished in the West fertilizer plant disaster in April 2013 were preve...Read More

Members of the West Volunteer Fire Department proceed to a memorial in Waco on April 25, 2013, for victims of the West explosion.

by Jonathan McNamara

Observer Radio Episode 54: Lingering Questions From West, Texas

Fri, Apr 18, 2014 |

We discuss the one-year anniversary of the West fertilizer plant disaster and what is being done (and not done) to prevent it from happening again....Read More

by Jonathan McNamara

Recovery: West, Texas Rebuilds

Thu, Apr 17, 2014 |

Today is the one-year anniversary of the fertilizer plant explosion in the small town of West, Texas, which killed 15 people and injured an estimated 300....Read More

by Priscila Mosqueda

Hero Complex

Last year was the deadliest on record for Texas firefighters. Can dampening a culture of heroism keep them safer?

Tue, Apr 1, 2014 |

Last year was the deadliest on record for Texas firefighters. Can dampening a culture of heroism keep them safer?...Read More

by Forrest Wilder

Inspections Show Texas Fertilizer Plants Still Vulnerable

Thu, Feb 27, 2014 |

Nearly a year after the West fertilizer plant explosion, holes in the system that allowed it to happen in the first place have not been addressed. ...Read More

Duke

by Alex Hannaford

Rescue Dogs: The Canines and Their Handlers Who Search the Aftermath of Catastrophe

Fri, Sep 20, 2013 |

Texas Task Force II currently has four dog handlers. Five more, currently in training, will join the team later this year. All are taught to find survivors. ...Read More

by Priscila Mosqueda and Forrest Wilder

State Agencies Meet Resistance in Policing Fertilizer Industry

Mon, Aug 26, 2013 |

In the aftermath of the West, Texas fertilizer disaster, state agencies meet resistance from other fertilizer facilities....Read More

by Forrest Wilder

The Lessons from West

Mon, Aug 19, 2013 |

I think it’s clear that West wasn’t an unavoidable act of God. It was a man-made industrial crime....Read More

by Forrest Wilder

Conservative Think Tanker Proposes Tax Cuts to Pay for West Disaster

Fri, Aug 2, 2013 |

Texas Public Policy Foundation deep thinker John Davidson proposes tax cuts for businesses to help West, Texas recover from the April fertilizer explosion....Read More

Top