UPDATE: Via NBC News:

A morning explosion and fire at a Louisiana chemical plant Thursday killed one person and injured dozens more, Gov. Bobby Jindal said.

The explosion took place at Williams Chemical Plant in Ascension Parish, Louisiana State Police said, and a fire after the explosion was contained and extinguished later in the day.

Seventy-three people were taken to local hospitals, and a total of 300 workers evacuated, Jindal said. He said 10 people remained in a safe room at the plant.

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CNN reports that emergency crews responded to an explosion at a chemical plant in Louisiana Thursday morning.

The blast and resulting fire occurred at the Williams Olefins facility in Geismar, causing multiple injuries, and forcing authorities to evacuate the area around the facility.

According to the Williams Olefins website:

"The Geismar, La. facility annually produces approximately 1.3 billion pounds of ethylene and 90 million pounds of polymer grade propylene. Also in Louisiana, the olefins team is responsible for the ethane transportation business consisting of approximately 200 miles of pipelines, as well as a refinery-grade propylene splitter."

WAFB reported that residents in St. Gabriel, a nearby community, were being asked to shelter in place as a precaution.

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At least seven people were injured Tuesday after an explosion on a college campus north of New York City.

Rockland Fire and Emergency Services coordinator Gordon Wren Jr. tells Fox News the explosion blew out windows and doors in a two-story building at Nyack College.

Wren says seven people were injured in the blast, including one woman who fell from a window and was taken to the hospital. None of the injuries appeared to be life-threatening. Some people were trapped after the explosion, but have since been freed.

The explosion at Nyack College happened just before noon. A spokesman for the Rockland County executive's office says county fire departments are responding.

"There's a lot of people hurt," South Nyack Mayor Bonnie Christian said after arriving at the scene. "There's a lot of people injured. We got ambulances up here galore."

The college sent out a tweet saying that "Everyone is doing ok."

Authorities say there's a gas leak at the building, but it's unclear if it caused the explosion or if the explosion caused the leak. The explosion sparked a fire in the building, which was surpressed by the sprinkler system.

Nyack College is a Christian college about 25 miles north of New York City. The explosion appears to have occurred inside the two-story Sky Island Lodge building at 177 South Hyland Ave.

Sky Island Lodge was built as a 30 room mansion in the 1930s, according to the Nyack Villager. From 1939 to 1945, the mansion was used for people displaced by the war in Germany.

Update May 11, 2013: This gets even weirder Saturday morning as the Dallas News updates their report from Friday.

- West officials for the first time told the state agency that licenses paramedics that Reed was let go two days after the explosion. A reason wasn’t given.

- According to a post this week on Bryce Reed’s Facebook page, his wife left him sometime after the explosion.

- It’s unclear if Reed knew about his apparent departure. The day after officials said he was let go, he gave an update about small fires at the explosion site to displaced West residents at a local hotel.

- Neighbors said the man and his wife and daughter hadn’t been living in their duplex since the blast. One neighbor, who asked that his name be withheld to protect his family’s safety, said Bryce Reed told him his wife had left him. The man said Bryce Reed also told him that the ATF was investigating him for fraud and that his attorneys had advised him to “get the hell out of Dodge.”

- The same neighbor said that Bryce Reed told him that he had a pipe bomb that had belonged to Cyrus Reed, but that he had given it to a friend to store.

- Reed has also made unverifiable claims about his education and career on his online resúmé on LinkedIn. It is unknown when it was last updated, but the bachelor’s and master’s degrees he claims he earned have been disputed by records and authoritative sources. He also claims to have held management positions with three entities that are now defunct.

- The only thing that seemed constant in his life was his career as a paramedic. As late as last week, Reed admitted feeling emotionally unstable.

- Records also show that two days after the explosion, Reed was “let go” at West’s volunteer EMS department, according to records and interviews.

- Back in West, neighbors who exchanged notes Friday said they quickly realized Reed had woven a different story to each of them. He told one that he was a cop and another that he worked for the government.

- Also, according to WFAA-TV (Channel 8), Reed is a contact person for a fundraiser that’s raised $33,177 in T-shirt sales through the website Tee-Spring.com.

Again, there are still no indications reported of a connection between the blast and Reed's arrest.
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The U.S. Attorney’s Office on Friday afternoon said it “will not speculate” on whether a pipe bomb allegedly belonging to a West paramedic has any connection with the fatal fertilizer plant fire and explosion that he responded to.

Reuters:

U.S. prosecutors charged Bryce Reed, 31, one of the first to respond to a deadly explosion last month in the Texas town of West, with unlawful possession of pipe bomb components, but authorities said no evidence linked the charge to the fertilizer plant disaster.

Reed appeared at federal court in Waco, Texas, on Friday, where he faced one count of unlawfully possessing an unregistered destructive device. He did not enter a plea, said Daryl Fields, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in the Western District of Texas.
...
Reed, who was arrested Thursday, is being held without bail and is due in court on May 15, according to court papers.

Federal prosecutors said in court papers they had responded to a home in Abbott, Texas, where they found a section of pipe 3-1/2 inches long and 1-1/2 inches in diameter, end caps, fuses and explosive powder. The resident of that home, whom they did not identify, told police the components came from Reed.
...
The state fire marshal's office has said that ammonium nitrate stored at the plant detonated in the explosion but it has not been able to pin down the cause of the fire and blast.

State officials on Friday ordered the Texas Rangers to join McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara in a criminal investigation into the blast.

The move to conduct a criminal investigation comes after weeks of largely treating the blast as an industrial accident.

Divergent portraits of Bryce Reed emerge as he remains in federal custody. The Dallas News reports:

After answering the door at his Rockwall home Friday, Gary Nelson said he couldn’t believe the charges against his stepson. He said there is “not a chance” that Reed was involved in the deadly explosion.

“He's been tore up about it,” Nelson said, adding that the family is “100 percent behind him.”

But the sister of a firefighter Reed eulogized at a public memorial last month said she had to ask police to guard her deceased brother’s apartment because she feared Reed had been stealing from it since the blast.

“Instead of grieving my brother's death, we're dealing with all of this,” said Sarah Reed, who is not related to Bryce Reed.

Bryce Reed’s wife, Brittany Reed, declined to comment when reached by phone early Friday.

“I can’t. No comment, no comment, no comment right now,” she said before hanging up the phone.

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw and McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara released a joint statement Friday morning about the criminal investigation. Neither mentioned Reed’s arrest.

“The citizens of McLennan County and Texas must have confidence that this incident has been looked at from every angle and professionally handled – they deserve nothing less,” McNamara said.

Bryce Reed’s neighbors on Main Street north of downtown West on Friday said that ATF agents were at the man’s home for several hours late Thursday afternoon. The neighbors declined to give their names but said Bryce Reed had a young daughter and that he hadn’t been staying at the home since the explosion.

At last month’s public memorial for the 12 people killed responding to the fire, Reed gave the eulogy for Cyrus Reed, who was a volunteer firefighter in nearby Abbott. The two men weren’t related, though they shared the same last name and Bryce Reed often referred to Cyrus Reed as his brother.

But Sarah Reed, who is Cyrus Reed’s biological sister, said her family had been “fooled by Bryce Reed.” She said that her family let Bryce Reed eulogize their relative because he led them to believe that he and Cyrus Reed were very close.

Sarah Reed said she and her family have gone through Cyrus Reed's computer and cellphone records and have found that the two first responders might not have been as close as the suspect led the public to believe, she said.

“He convinced us that he and Cyrus were very close, like brothers," she said. "But I want people to know they are not brothers, and he is not part of our family."

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Whoa, this isn't going to be anywhere near enough. According to a lawyer filing suit against the owners of the Texas fertilizer plant that exploded last month, the plant only carried a $1 million liability insurance policy. The blast last month killed 14 people, injured 200 more, and destroyed blocks of nearby property. An estimate by an insurance industry group puts the damages at $100 million.

AP:

Tyler lawyer Randy C. Roberts said he and other attorneys who have filed lawsuits against West Fertilizer's owners were told Thursday that the plant carried only $1 million in liability insurance. Brook Laskey, an attorney hired by the plant's insurer to represent West Fertilizer Co., confirmed the amount Saturday in an email to The Associated Press, after the Dallas Morning News first reported it.

"The bottom line is, this lack of insurance coverage is just consistent with the overall lack of responsibility we've seen from the fertilizer plant, starting from the fact that from day one they have yet to acknowledge responsibility," Roberts said.

Roberts said he expects the plant's owner to ask a judge to divide the $1 million in insurance money among the plaintiffs, several of whom he represents, and then file for bankruptcy.

He said he wasn't surprised that the plant was carrying such a small policy.

"It's rare for Texas to require insurance for any kind of hazardous activity," he said. "We have very little oversight of hazardous activities and even less regulation."

Roberts said that lawyers will look to see what other assets the company may have, as well as search for any other responsible parties.

The fertilizer plant that exploded on in West, Texas in April, wiping out part of a small Texas town and killing at least 14 people, had last year been storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

And while state regulatory officials were aware (assuming they read the filings from the fertilizer plant) of the massive quantity of ammonium nitrate and anhydrous being stored at West Fertilizer, it wasn't their job to notify the DHS.

McClatchy reports:

A 2006 permit application to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality noted the facility had the capacity to process up to 2,400 tons of ammonium nitrate. In 2012, West Fertilizer informed the Texas Department of State Health Services that 270 tons of ammonium nitrate and 55 tons of anhydrous were on hand at the facility.

Those figures never went reported - state officials were not required to do so - to the federal Department of Homeland Security, which has kept a database of fertilizer storage spots following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. In that attack, which killed 168, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols constructed a bomb using roughly 5,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer.

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By Theodoric Meyer, ProPublica

A week after a blast at a Texas fertilizer plant killed at least 15 people and hurt more than 200, authorities still don't know exactly why the West Chemical and Fertilizer Company plant exploded.

Here's what we do know: The fertilizer plant hadn't been inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 1985. Its owners do not seem to have told the Department of Homeland Security that they were storing large quantities of potentially explosive fertilizer, as regulations require. And the most recent partial safety inspection of the facility in 2011 led to $5,250 in fines.

We've laid out which agencies were in charge of regulating the plant and who's investigating the explosion now.

What happened, exactly?

Around 7:30 p.m. on April 17, a fire broke out at the West Chemical and Fertilizer Company plant in West, Texas, a small town of about 2,800 people 75 miles south of Dallas. Twenty minutes later, it blew up. The explosion shook houses 50 miles away and was so powerful that the United States Geological Survey registered it as a 2.1-magnitude earthquake. It flattened homes within a five-block radius and destroyed a nursing home, an apartment complex, and a nearby middle school.  According to the New York Times, the blast left a crater 93 feet wide and 10 feet deep, and the fire "burned with such intensity that railroad tracks were fused."

The blast killed at least 15 people, most of them firefighters and other first responders.

Have fertilizer plants ever exploded before?

Yes. A plant in Sergeant Bluff, Iowa, that manufactured ammonium nitrate fertilizer — the same explosive chemical stored in West — exploded on Dec. 13, 1994, killing four people and injuring 18.

But fertilizer plants are safer now, said Stephen Slater, the Iowa administrator of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. "All kinds of technologies have had huge improvements," he told the Des Moines Register. "And we haven't had any bad experiences at the plants in the 20 years since [the accident]. I'm knocking on wood." (Slater didn't respond to our requests for comment.)

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A lone gunman opened fire at a car wash and barber shop in Herkimer and Mohawk, upstate New York. Four people have been killed and at least two injured.

Schools in Herkimer County are on lockdown after the suspect opened fire at two different locations before fleeing, according to local reports.

The shooter opened fire at Gaffey's Car Wash, on Mohawk Street in the village of Herkimer, 65 miles east of Syracuse, killing two people. The gun rampage continued to the nearby area of Mohawk, where the suspect shot four people at John's Barber Shop on Main Street, killing two. There were also reports of an explosion/fire at South Washington Street in Mohawk shortly before the shootings. A report from the Utica Observer-Dispatch indicates the suspect is believed to have lived in that building; "police were seen taking about half a dozen long guns from the residence shortly before 11 a.m. but would not confirm if they belonged to the suspect."

Police are believed to be looking for one suspect, 64-year-old Kurt Myers of Mohawk, who is thought to have used a long gun and fled in a red Jeep with a black top. The vehicle was recovered shortly after 10am this morning in Herkimer, but Myers is still on the run. Police describe Myers as "a 50- to 60-year-old slender white male, about 5-foot-11, with white hair and a white beard, last seen wearing a flannel shirt." Myers is considered "armed and extremely dangerous." Residents are advised to stay indoors and to call 911 if they see him. Police also said they are "familiar" with Myers, but could not comment on any criminal record he may have.

More than 700 people were injured when a meteorite shot across the sky and exploded over central Russia on Friday, sending fireballs crashing to Earth, shattering windows and damaging buildings:

MOSCOW — Bright objects, apparently debris from a meteorite, streaked through the sky in western Siberia early on Friday, accompanied by a boom that damaged buildings across a vast area of territory. Hundreds of people were reported to have been injured, most from breaking glass.

Emergency officials had reported no deaths by Friday afternoon, but administrators in the city of Chelyabinsk said that more than 750 residents had sought medical care and 31 had been hospitalized.

Russian experts believe the blast was caused by a 10-ton meteor known as a bolide, which created a powerful shock wave when it reached the Earth’s atmosphere, the Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement. Scientists believe the bolide exploded and evaporated at a height of around 20 to 30 miles above the Earth’s surface, but that small fragments may have reached the ground, the statement said.

The governor of the Chelyabinsk district reported that a search team had found an impact crater on the outskirts of a city about 50 miles west of Chelyabinsk. An official from the Interior Ministry told the Russian news agency Interfax that three large pieces of meteorite debris had been retrieved in the area and that 10,000 police officers are searching for more.

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West Virginia reopened Interstate 77 on Wednesday, one day after a massive gas explosion turned 800 feet of asphalt into cinder and leveled four homes along the road and damaging another five. There were no deaths reported. Federal and state employees are still investigating the cause of the explosion that occurred in a gas transmission line owned by NiSource Inc., parent company of Columbia Gas. “It really cooked the interstate,” said Kent Carper, president of Kanawha County Commission. The explosion melted guardrails, cooked the green enamel off highway signs, and burned utility poles along the road:

"We've been very fortunate," said Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, after seeing the collapsed and charred houses. "They were just lucky enough not to be home."

Most of the neighborhood's residents were at work or school. One man, Tomblin said, had just left to go hunting.

Federal and state agencies are now investigating what caused the explosion in the 20-inch transmission line owned by NiSource Inc., parent company of Columbia Gas. The gas flow was shut off, but residents who lived within 1,000 feet of the fire zone were evacuated as a precaution.

Kent Carper, president of the Kanawha County Commission, said flames were shooting some 75 feet into the air before the fire was extinguished.

"It sounded like a Boeing 757. Just a roar," he said. "It was huge. You just couldn't hear anything. It was like a space flight."

Carper said the flames spanned about a quarter of a mile and ran through a culvert under the interstate.

"It actually cooked the interstate," he said. "It looks like a tar pit."

Natural gas may be cleaner than coal (It's still being debated and studied), but solar and wind don't blow up houses and roads like what happened in West Virginia yesterday.

[Image via Flickr]

By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica

When the Obama administration temporarily banned BP from federal contracts Wednesday, it pointed to BP's "lack of business integrity" and conduct relating to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill.

The sanction, however, has been years in the making.

BP has been criminally convicted in four previous cases — including a 2005 explosion in Texas that killed 15 workers — and the EPA has been considering broader debarment proceedings against the company since at least 2005. The agency had actually been nearing a decision on a contract ban in January 2010, just a few months before the Deepwater Horizon tragedy unfolded, killing 11 workers and sending more than 200 million gallons of oil into the sea.

"This is not just about the Deepwater Horizon, but about a whole lot of things and a whole lot of parts of BP," said a former government official familiar with the debarment process. "It wasn't just narrowly scoped... they are looking at it as a systemic corporate-wide issue."

A limited suspension of government contracts for a specific facility or subsidiary operations, called suspension and debarment, is standard practice after a criminal conviction.

BP pleaded guilty on Nov. 15 to federal criminal charges of manslaughter and lying to Congress and agreed to pay more than $4 billion in fines relating to the Deepwater Horizon accident, which killed 11 workers and sent more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Three of the company's managers have also been criminally charged.

But the broad sanctions announced Wednesday target the BP corporation writ large — the British-based parent company and 21 international subsidiaries are included — and reflect a mistrust for BP's operations that has been growing over more than a decade.

In this case, experts close to the case say, the timing of the government's announcement was significant.

It came just hours before the government sold new rights to drill in the Gulf of the Mexico and seems intended to prevent BP, the largest leaseholder in the Gulf, from expanding its operations there until all of its problems are resolved.

"Suspensions are always timed to prevent something from happening," said Jeanne Pascal, a former EPA debarment attorney who led the government's investigation into BP from 1997 until she retired in 2010.

"A debarment says you have chronic bad behavior, and we think you present chronic risk for the government and that you will continue this behavior," said Pascal. "The immediate need was the issuance of new leases (Wednesday) in the Gulf of Mexico."

Wednesday's actions represent the government's effort to protect its fiscal resources and protect the public economic interest by not using taxpayer money to support actions that could cost the government more money later on.

After several past BP accidents, including two oil spills in Alaska and close calls at several U.S. refineries, private consultants and government investigators have pointed to wide-ranging problems within the company's culture. The critics have warned that BP has consistently prioritized speed and profit-making over safety and regulatory compliance.

The type of suspension ordered Wednesday is a part of what the government calls a "discretionary" debarment, which means it is considering this broader "corporate culture of noncompliance" and longer history.

While the EPA is the lead agency, its debarment decision affects the Department of Interior and Department of Defense, among other agencies. BP is among the U.S.'s largest corporate contractors and supplies more than $1 billion a year worth of fuel to the military.

The temporary suspension order issued Wednesday is the first step in a still-to-be-made decision about whether BP should be formally debarred, or banned entirely from contracts for a specified length of time.

For now, EPA officials tell ProPublica that the suspension could last anywhere from two to 18 months, depending on the final terms of the Department of Justice's plea agreement with BP. If the civil suits against BP remain unresolved, the suspension could stay in place longer.

As part of its criminal plea announced earlier this month, BP agreed to hire ethics and safety monitors for its Gulf operations and regularly evaluate its facilities for safety and environmental compliance. If the court approves the plea agreement, those terms would become a part of BP's probation, and thus a term of the suspension and debarment proceedings, an EPA spokesperson told ProPublica.

A spokesperson assigned to speak on behalf of BP told ProPublica that the company had not intended to bid on new Gulf leases in Wednesday's sale, and was not aware of the EPA's suspension decision until after their bids were due. But a Nov. 15 press release and filings with the SEC both suggest the company knew a ban could be coming.

BP was not explicitly banned from participating in the sale of new rights to drill in western Gulf of Mexico waters Wednesday, but would not have been allowed to win any leases if it had competed for them, a Department of Interior official said.

Since the 2010 spill in the Gulf, the government has granted BP more than 50 new leases in the Gulf of Mexico. BP is the single largest investor and leaseholder in the Gulf, where it currently operates seven drilling rigs.

"BP has invested more than $52 billion in the United States," the company said in a statement, "more than any other oil and gas company and more than it invests in any other country." It emphasized that it employs 23,000 people in the U.S. and said it supports nearly a quarter of a million American jobs.

So far, BP has spent more than $14 billion on cleanup and settlement costs related to the Gulf spill, and expects to pay more than $37 billion — including in criminal and civil settlements — by the time it is finished. In addition, the company has stated a renewed focus on safety and reorganized its corporate operations to increase safety and environmental accountability.

"I believe BP is genuine and sincere" in its efforts, said Tommy Beaudreau, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, in a press conference held Wednesday after the government's lease sale.

BP also emphasized that it is working speedily towards a resolution with the government.

"BP has been in regular dialogue with the EPA and has already provided both a present responsibility statement of more than 100 pages and supplemental answers to the EPA's questions," it said in a statement. "The EPA has informed BP that it is preparing a proposed administrative agreement that, if agreed upon, would effectively resolve and lift this temporary suspension."

Suevon Lee contributed reporting to this story.

Questions on the latest BP news? Join our live chat November 29 at 1 p.m. ET, with reporter Abrahm Lustgarten.