"A massive explosion at a fertilizer plant in central Texas... more than 160 people wounded and killed an estimated 5 to 15 people..."

"... officials said, likely including firefighters who had been battling the blaze at the factory that triggered the explosion."

Images of the gargantuan fireball that devastated the tiny town of West, 20 miles north of Waco, were particularly jarring, coming just two days after a bombing that killed three people and injured scores of others at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

A different kind of explosion in a different part of the country.

Happening in Texas and involving fertilizer, it makes me think of the 1947 Texas City disaster, which killed "at least 581 people, including all but one member of the Texas City fire department." (I grew up hearing about this disaster, because my parents had lived in the city at the time.)