Remember Texas

by Stuart Shapiro

There is no question that the Boston Marathon bombing was horrible and the capture of the bomber brings a profound sense of relief.  However, this week there was an event of comparable destruction in the small town of WestTexas.

Two days after the explosion at a fertilizer plant in this town sliced by a busy railroad and highway in Central Texas, the death toll rose to 14, but with the search of damaged structures nearly finished by Friday afternoon, only a few people were still presumed missing, local and county officials said. . . Sgt. Jason Reyes of the Texas Department of Public Safety said that about 200 people were injured and that at least 50 homes were damaged by the explosion, which was caused by a fire inside the plant on Wednesday evening. The plant is surrounded by houses, a 50-unit apartment complex, three schools and a nursing home.

Given the death and destruction in Texas, I hope that we spend the same amount of resources in investigating the cause of the Texas explosion and preventing it from happening again (Yes, that means regulation.) as we did in Boston.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.