Forensic mappers work the crater at the site of the fire and explosion in West, Texas, on Wednesday, April 24. The plant run by West Fertilizer Co. in the small Texas town exploded on Wednesday, April 17, killing 14 people, most of them emergency responders. Dozens were injured.
Editor's note: John D. Sutter is a human rights and social change columnist at CNN Opinion. E-mail him at CTL@CNN.com or follow him on Twitter (@jdsutter), Facebook or Google+.
(CNN) -- It's a surreal and horrifying scene. Father and daughter are in a truck that's parked in a relatively distant field, behind a fence. They're watching a building burn.
"It should collapse," the dad says.
Then, suddenly: A deafening explosion. Vehicle shakes. Microphone hisses. The recording is fuzzy.
Then you hear screams. This YouTube clip has been passed all over the Internet, including on news sites, since a fertilizer plant exploded in West, Texas, on Wednesday.
"Are you OK!?"
"Dad! Dad! I can't hear! Get outta here! Please get outta here! ..."
"Oh my God."
The video goes black.
"I'm pretty sure it lifted the truck off the ground," Derrick Hurtt, who recorded the video, said in an interview on NBC's "Today" show. "It just blew me over on top of her. It all happened so quick that things kind of went black for a moment."
Hurtt told the show his 12-year-old daughter's hearing had returned.
Authorities haven't determined the cause of that explosion, which is thought to have killed at least five people and injured scores more, according to news reports. It may well have been an accident, and I am in no ways insinuating it was linked to terror. But already people on the ground and in the media are comparing this tragedy -- along with the Boston Marathon bombing, which may seem like an eternity ago, but happened Monday; and the letters that are thought to contain ricin and were intended for the president and a senator -- to others that linger in America's memory.
It seems to be the week of terror flashbacks.
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That YouTube clip -- it's hard to watch and I can't decide if I should encourage you to do so or warn against it -- gives a small sense of what it must be like to live through any explosion, disaster or terrorist attack, regardless of its cause. Even for those who haven't, many people in the United States are being haunted this week by attacks and disasters of the past. And it's tempting to feel like we've been cursed to relive these nightmares over and over again.
The parallels are eerie. Oklahoma City. The Waco fire. Both of those anniversaries (if we can call them that) are this week, as Amy Davidson pointed out in a smart piece for The New Yorker. The fertilizer plant exploded in West, Texas, which is only 20 miles or so from Waco, the site of the David Koresh compound fire.
"Massive -- just like Iraq. Just like the Murrah (Federal) Building in Oklahoma City," D.L. Wilson, from the Texas public safety department, said at a news conference.
The letters that possibly contained ricin have thrown people back to the moment after the September 11 attacks when there was an anthrax scare on Capitol Hill.
The Boston bombings, cause unknown, drew comparisons to 9/11, the Atlanta Olympics bombing -- and Oklahoma City.
A former co-worker of mine, Bob Doucette, wrote "An open letter from Oklahoma regarding the Boston Marathon" on his blog. He highlighted the emotional parallels.
"It's hard to find the right words. But we feel your pain, shock and sadness. Deep within us," he wrote. "Back in 1995, while working for a little suburban newspaper in Oklahoma City, I went to the Murrah Building site soon after the attack. What I saw reminded me of past bombings, overseas, in havens of war like Beirut. Friends and co-workers are still haunted by what they saw there. Oklahoma City rebuilt, but did not forget."
The past comes back to life -- no matter the cause. And April is a particularly awful month for it. The assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (April 4, 1968); the death of Abraham Lincoln (April 15, 1865); the shootings at Columbine High School (April 20, 1999); and those at Virginia Tech (April 16, 2007) all happened this month in history.
At the time of writing, no evidence links this week's frightening events -- the bombing, the letter, the explosion. Nor is there evidence to tie them to terror events of the past. I'm not interested in teasing out the potential motives or causes behind these disasters. In the case of the Texas explosion, it's possible that it was simply a horrific accident, although authorities say they are treating the area as a crime scene until they have firm evidence to the contrary.
What is more interesting to me right now is the psychological toll this takes on us. This has been a traumatic week in every since of the word. Lives lost in Boston and West, Texas. Fear in Washington. As we pray for the victims and their families ... and sing the national anthem in unison at hockey games ... and run in tribute to those who were hit by a bomb at a marathon finish line ... and lend our support to people in Texas ... we're left wondering what this all means and if we'll be able to stitch up the wounds and move on.
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Those directly hurt or whose loved ones were killed in these events may never be the same. But where does this leave the county as a whole? It's hard to say for now.
Perhaps, as many people have pointed out, we can take comfort in knowing there are "helpers" and heroes in each of these tragedies -- people run toward the sound of the blast or toward the flames. And in the fact that, as Peter Bergen wrote earlier this week, terrorist bombings in the U.S. have been "exceedingly rare" since 9/11.
We'll have to wait for clues to emerge about what or who caused all of this week's events to really know how to process them. There will always be flashbacks of terror and disaster and tragedy. Maybe that's the world we live in. But that doesn't mean we can't push back.
That's why I'll be watching from afar as people convene on April 28 for the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon. As Doucette, my former colleague, writes, "We'll be running for the 168 of our own who died and the many more who were spared but inexorably scarred. But we're running for your guys, too. Because we know."
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The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of John D. Sutter.
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Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on April 24 search the bank of rail tracks for evidence at the site of the explosion.
Smoke billows into the sky immediately after the explosion at West Fertilizer Co. in West, Texas, on Wednesday, April 17, as captured by
The West Fertilizer Co. lies in ruins in West, Texas, on Thursday, April 18, the day after the accident.
The remains of an apartment complex lie on cars on April 18.
A deer head mount sits inside a car parked next to a apartment complex damaged in the explosion.
Search and rescue workers comb through what remains of a 50-unit apartment building, in foreground, and a nursing home on April 18.
The remains of a car sit in front of an apartment complex destroyed after the fertilizer plant blast.
A Valley Mills Fire Department firefighter walks the remains of an apartment complex next to the fertilizer plant on April 18.
Fire personnel check out the railroad tracks near the fertilizer plant on April 18.
Valley Mills Fire Department personnel view the railroad tracks near the fertilizer plant on April 18.
Smoke rises April 18 from the rubble of a house next to the fertilizer plant.
A railroad boxcar lies on its side near the plant on April 18.
A Texas State Trooper stops people from entering a neighborhood near the plant on April 18.
A chimney is the only part of a home left standing after Wednesday's explosion.
Search and rescue workers comb through what remains of a 50-unit apartment building on April 18.
Workers clean up shattered windows at a store in West, Texas, on April 18.
Debris litters the fields around a fertilizer plant on April 18, the day after the explosion. The blast damaged 50 to 60 homes in a five-block area, officials said.
This satellite image shows West, Texas, as captured on January 30, 2012. The fertilizer plant is on the right center of the photo, just northeast of the oval track of the town's middle school.
A sheriff's deputy comforts a woman at a command post on April 18.
Brandon Smith removes broken glass from the West Thrift Shop on Thursday.
Workers board up a furniture shop with shattered windows on Thursday.
Remains of a fertilizer plant burn in West early April 18.
Water is sprayed at the burning remains of the plant.
The deadly explosion leveled dozens of homes and damaged other buildings on April 18, including a school and nursing home, authorities said.
A vehicle is seen near the remains of the fertilizer plant on April 18.
With smoke rising in the distance, a law enforcement officer runs a checkpoint at the perimeter about half a mile from the plant on April 18.
Waco Police spokesman William Swanton speaks to reporters about the explosion on April 18.
Glass from blown-out windows lies shattered on the sidewalk and street after the blast on April 18.
Earth-moving equipment rolls through the downtown area in the middle of the night on April 18.
Shattered glass covers items in the front of a thrift store on April 18.
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