Three civilians, one police officer, and one suspect died during the bombing of the Boston Marathon and its aftermath. More than 170 more were seriously injured, mostly from the blast.
The body count from the West Fertilizer Plant explosion in the town of West, Texas is still being calculated. So far, there are fifteen confirmed deaths and over 200 injuries, in addition to the total immolation of the plant, and the destruction of an apartment building, a school, and at least eighty homes. Many of the dead are first responders who fought the initial conflagration for thirty minutes before the plant went up like a megaton bomb, creating shock waves that were felt 80 miles away in Ft. Worth.
So why is it that these two events, which happened at roughly the same time, have received such substantially different news coverage? Why was the entire nation focused on Boston for nearly a week, while the tragedy in West was practically ignored by comparison?
Some of the reasons are obvious:
- Boston is a helluva a lot bigger than West. Millions live in the Boston area, situated atop the busy Northeast corridor, and millions more visit every year. West has a population under 3,000 and most people have never heard of it.
- Civilian bombings are specifically designed to affect terror and grab attention, and the bombing of the Boston Marathon did just that. The explosion in West was an accident, which inspires a sense of sadness and remorse, but not fear anywhere near the scale that a bombing does.
- Civilian bombings also impart a sense that the nation at large is under attack. Americans instinctively rallied around in Boston. Americans are less likely to feel innate kinship to the victims of a fire at a rural fertilizer plant.
- The ensuing, days-long manhunt for the car-jacking, bomb-throwing Tsarnaev brothers was highly dramatic. It’s the stuff of a Hollywood action movie come to life, and it made for a riveting storyline.
All of the above are perfectly legitimate reasons why so much more attention was focused on Boston than on West. But I have a problem with it nonetheless.
I’m not one to compare the “tragedy quotient” of various horrors. I roll my eyes at people who want to debate whether slavery or the Holocaust was worse. And I won’t indulge that sentiment vis a vis Boston and West. Both episodes were tragic and resulted in the death and maiming of innocent people.
But I do want to question our collective reactions.
Precisely because both events are tragic on a similar scale, the comparative level of coverage by the national press is utterly inexcusable, and yet another stain on the increasingly shallow and money-hungry nature of commercial journalism. One episode was clearly better for ratings than the other, and that played a major role in many outlets’ decision about how to apportion coverage of the respective events. And that in turn helps shape our reactions.
Who’s wearing ribbons for the dead workers and civil servants of West, Texas?
But what makes this all the more infuriating are the causes of these respective tragedies. The Boston bombing was the work of (at least) two murderous assholes who were hellbent on killing people. In other words, it could not be avoided. If two murderous assholes really want to kill a bunch of people, without fear of consequences to themselves, then they’re going to kill a bunch of people.
But what happened in West, Texas was absolutely avoidable. In fact, a case could be made that what transpired there is nothing less than negligent homicide.
Nitrogen-based fertilizers are, of course, highly flammable. If you haven’t seen footage of the plant explosion, then hold onto your hat. It’s truly massive. It makes the Boston bombs look like firecrackers by comparison.
That’s why there are strict regulations about how much of the stuff you can store before having to report to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The limit is one-fifth of a ton, or 400 lbs.
The plant in West was sitting on 270 tons. That would be 540,000 lbs, or 1,350 times the non-reportage limit.
“It seems this manufacturer was willfully off the grid,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, (D-MS) is quoted as saying in an article by Reuters. Thompson should know. He’s the ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security.
“This facility was known to have chemicals well above the threshold amount to be regulated under the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Act (CFATS), yet we understand that DHS did not even know the plant existed until it blew up.”
What happened at Boston was an act of terror. What happened in West was the result of illegal actions that clearly defied federal anti-terrorism law.
The death toll in Texas is at least thrice that of Boston. The injury total is comparable. Yet not only does the press shame itself by emphasizing the tragedy of one event while downplaying the tragedy of another, but it also fails to do it’s job in a most fundamental way when it elevates the Tsarnaev brothers 
into world infamous villains while all but ignoring the greedy criminals responsible for the the tragedy in Texas.
Dzokhar Tsarnaev is possibly facing the death penalty for his actions. But tell me: What will happen to West Fertilizer Plant owner Donald Adair?