Gail Alexan­der

No T&T na­tion­als are so far re­port­ed to have been hurt in the ex­plo­sion at the west Texas fer­tilis­er plant which oc­curred Wednes­day night, ac­cord­ing to Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Ja­mal Mo­hammed.The ex­plo­sion claimed the lives of over 30 peo­ple, in­clud­ing fire­fight­ers who had rushed to put out the blaze, and in­jured more than 100. It dam­aged and de­stroyed build­ings over a half-mile ra­dius.

Mo­hammed said yes­ter­day ini­tial re­ports from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed that no T&T na­tion­als were killed. He said Gov­ern­ment is con­tin­u­ing en­quiries un­til all of the dead and in­jured are iden­ti­fied."We have made con­tact with the of­fi­cial chan­nels in Wash­ing­ton to gath­er in­for­ma­tion on the list of ca­su­al­ties and in­jured," said T&T am­bas­sador to the US, Dr Neil Parsan, when con­tact­ed by the T&T Guardian.

"The hon­orary con­sul rep­re­sent­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go in Texas has al­so been en­gaged to li­aise with the con­gress­man's of­fice to get ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion. We al­so con­tin­ue to li­aise with our T&T na­tion­als in Texas," he added.