Explosion rocks Wisconsin refinery, forcing evacuations
An explosion rocked a refinery in northwestern Wisconsin on Thursday, injuring at least 11 people, forcing the evacuation of homes, schools and a hospital, and sending a plume of noxious smoke billowing into the air.
Authorities said a tank of crude oil or asphalt exploded about 10 a.m. at the Husky Energy oil refinery in Superior, a city of about 27,000 that shares a Lake Superior shipping port with nearby Duluth, Minnesota. That prompted them to order the evacuation of a three-mile radius around the refinery, as well as a 10-mile corridor south of it where the smoke was heading.
It was unclear how many people were being evacuated. The refinery is in an industrial area, but there’s a residential neighborhood within a mile to the northeast. The corridor downwind to the south of the refinery is sparsely populated.
Hospital officials said only one of the injured was seriously hurt, with what was described as a blast injury. No deaths were reported, and officials said all workers had been accounted for.
Thick, black smoke poured from the refinery hours after the explosion. Refinery manager Kollin Schade said the smoke was from burning asphalt that was so hot that firefighters, unable to attack the fire to try to put it out. Emergency officials later said another tank had caught fire, too, though they didn’t specify what was in it.
The fire was put out about 11:20 a.m. but reignited, prompting police to urge residents living within an evacuation area to leave. Police blocked roads into the area around the refinery. Three schools and St. Mary’s Hospital in Superior were being evacuated as a precaution.
A contractor who was inside the building told WDIO television that the explosion sounded like “a sonic boom” and that it happened when crews were working on shutting the plant down for repairs.
Kara Tudor, 30, and Julia Johnson, 27, live about two miles from the refinery and were ordered to evacuate. They quickly scooped up their two dogs and three cats, grabbed their toothbrushes and drove to a friend’s house in Duluth, where they were watching the news for updates.
Johnson was working from home at the time of the blast. She said the windows shook.
“It felt like something had hit the house, like a vehicle or a branch from a tree . ... Our dogs started barking. It was a stressful moment,” she said. She also wondered if a plane had crashed and feared her house might collapse. She looked around but didn’t see anything — then a few moments later she saw dense black smoke rising over the trees.
By lunchtime, they had to go. Tudor went home as the clouds in the sky were masked by thick, black smoke and the air smelled like burning tires.
“It was scary,” Tudor said. “We threw our dogs in her car. I put the cats in my car, ... we grabbed our toothbrushes and just left . ... We were mostly focused on the pets because it smelled like burning tires outside and we knew that wasn’t a good smell.”