Major Explosion: Waco Tx, Audio/ Video From The "HOT" Zone (Live Video and Live Police Scanner)

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An explosion ripped through a fertilizer plant Wednesday night in the town of West, Texas, sending a massive fireball into the sky and causing dozens of injuries, officials said.

A hospital in nearby Waco, Texas, has been told to anticipate 100 injured people coming in from the fertilizer plant area, an official at the medical facility said.

Glenn Robinson, CEO of Hillcrest Hospital, said a field triage station was being set up on a football field near the plant some 18 miles north of Waco after the Wednesday night explosion.

“We have had a steady flow of patients coming in by ambulance as well as by private vehicles,” Robinson told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. He said more than a dozen injured people had been brought in by ambulances and “more than 20 — that number is continuing to climb — by private vehicle.”

Hazardous material teams were being rushed to the scene, an emergency management official said.

At least six helicopters are going to fly out those who are injured, Robinson said. Others are being transported by ambulance, and some are getting to the hospital by car, he added.

An explosion at a fertilizer plant near Waco Wednesday night injured dozens of people and sent flames shooting high into the night sky, leaving the factory a smoldering ruin and causing major damage to surrounding buildings.

The blast at West Fertilizer in West, a community about 20 miles north of Waco, happened shortly before 8 p.m. and could be heard as far away as Waxahachie, 45 miles to the north.

There was no immediate word from officials about fatalities or the severity of the explosion, as Texas Gov. Rick Perry said state officials were also waiting for details about the extent of the damage.

Debby Marak told The Associated Press that when she finished teaching her religion class Wednesday night, she noticed a lot of smoke in the area across town near the plant, which is near a nursing home. She said she drove over to see what was happening, and that when she got there, two boys came running toward her screaming that the authorities ordered everyone out because the plant was going to explode.

She said she drove about a block when the blast happened.

“It was like being in a tornado,” Marak, 58, said by phone. “Stuff was flying everywhere. It blew out my windshield.”

“It was like the whole earth shook.”

She drove 10 blocks and called her husband and asked him to come get her. When they got to their home about 2 miles south of town, her husband told her what he’d seen: a huge fireball that rose like “a mushroom cloud.”

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