Plant explosions rock Port Neches
Just days after EPA safety rollback, SE Texas town awakens to inferno
Two explosions over a span of 13 hours rocked a Port Neches chemical plant on Wednesday, injuring workers and a few residents, damaging homes and businesses, and prompting a series of mandatory evacuations and a 10 p.m. curfew enforced by state law enforcement officers dispatched by the governor.
The first blast shook MidCounty residents from their beds around 1 a.m. when a processing unit at the Houston-based Texas Petrochemicals Group facility exploded. Three workers were treated at hospitals, along with at least five others sprayed by shattered glass or debris. None of the injuries appear to have been serious, plant and local emergency officials said.
As far away as Port Arthur, people spent hours
under orders to take shelter inside their own homes. Throughout it all, a towering black plume hung over the region like a macabre Thanksgiving balloon that was visible for miles.
A second blast, heard or even felt across several Southeast Texas counties, occurred about 1:45 p.m. Groves fire officials said the second incident caused a tower to fall. The dramatic display was followed by a broader evacuation and then an official disaster declaration, giving local governments more flexibility to protect life and property.
Jefferson County Judge Jeff Branick ordered the second evacuation due to the potential for more explosions.
The inferno was expected to continue burning at least into Thanksgiving morning, said Brent Roy of the United Steelworkers union, which represents workers in the plant. Firefighters from local agencies and industry were expected to keep water on the blaze to keep nearby tanks cool while it burns itself out.
“The kind of fire it is, it’s going to be hard to contain like it is,” said Roy. “So a lot of it’s going to have to be — let it burn out.”
Should some of the closest tanks overheat, he said, they would feed the fire but would not likely create a large explosion. He warned that others, to the north, posed a more serious potential threat.
“There’s some other vessels we don’t want to catch on fire, though,” Roy said. “The north end of the plant, we definitely don’t want that catching on fire. We’re okay as long as the wind is blowing out of the north.”
The processing unit suspected to be involved produces butadiene, a precursor chemical used in synthetic rubber, Jefferson County Emergency Management coordinator Mike White said.
State environmental monitors did not immediately detect any unusually elevated levels of chemicals emanating from the plant, White said, and the company said it had teams monitoring the air “along the fence line.”
Regional staff from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency conducted handheld and vehicle-mounted monitoring for various compounds including volatile organic compounds, benzene, lower explosive limit, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and radiation outside the evacuation zone.
TPC Group spokeswoman Sara Cronin said Wednesday night that the fire is being treated as an ongoing event, and there is no timeline for its resolution.
She also said no actionable airquality readings had been recorded at any of the 20 monitoring stations in the area. The company has been working “hand in hand” with local, state and federal authorities since the first explosion, she said, adding that TPC has a highly trained emergency response team, bolstered by quarterly drills.
“We are just really focused on the incident and safely and quickly resolving it so that we can do so in a way that the responders are safe and the community is safe” and the environment is protected, Cronin said.
Despite the absence of any apparent elevated butadiene levels, residents in Groves and for a halfmile area between the TPC plant and Texas 347, as well as Orange County residents for a short time, were asked to evacuate until midday Wednesday. In response, the American Red Cross opened a shelter at First Baptist Church.
No impacts to water quality were reported.
TCEQ on Wednesday morning requested help from the EPA for a fixed-winged aircraft that provides real-time chemical and radiological detection, infrared and photographic imagery, according to officials. The Airborne Spectral Photometric Environmental Collection Technology, or ASPECT, was used for a refinery fire in Convert, La., three years ago and the devastating West Fertilizer explosion in spring 2013.
As residents were first allowed back in their homes, firefighters from Port Neches, Port Arthur, Groves and Nederland were joined by teams from Huntsman and other operators in the heavily industrialized area, fighting the fire through the day Wednesday.
Meanwhile, residents boarded up windows, swept up shattered glass and counted their blessings.
“We had some windows blow out and there are quite a few other places dealing with it, but not everyone,” Avenue Coffee Cafe co-owner David Pool said as he cleaned up his restaurant on Port Neches Avenue. “The tenant closest to the explosion is perfectly fine.”
Roger Wallace said the blast blew out his front window and tore the door to an interior utility room off its hinges.
“That’ll get you up quickly in the morning,” he said.
Wallace, who did some contract work at the plant 30 years ago, evacuated his daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter but returned to check on things. He said the little girl kept her toys near the utility room that lost its door, and expressed gratitude that everyone was asleep and out of harm’s way when it occurred.
By midday, a local law firm had already filed a class-action lawsuit and an application for a temporary restraining order and injunction against TPC.
Chip Ferguson, managing partner of The Ferguson Law Firm, said that, if granted, the filings in his case would preserve evidence at the explosion site to preserve answers “in the scorched rubble inside the TPC plant.”
“It’s a tragedy made even worse due to the holiday season,” he said. “It’s scary from the position that you’re asleep and wake up with your doors being blown in and the sky on fire and you’re packing up and getting your children and you don’t know what happened. It’s hard to imagine anything more terrifying than that.”
The lawsuit accuses TPC of negligence, willful misconduct and private nuisance, among other charges.
Ferguson acknowledged that TPC accepted responsibility for the explosion, but said there wasn’t enough focus on peoples’ health.
A second, similar class-action lawsuit was filed by legal heavyweight Provost Umphrey later in the day.
The physical injuries both at the plant — involving two employees and a contract worker — were reportedly minor, although one worker was airlifted to Houston as a precaution, White said. All three were treated and released by Wednesday morning, said TPC manager of safety, health and security Troy Monk.
“We are focused on their quick recovery and providing support to their families,” TPC said in a statement.
The company said it had promptly alerted local, state and federal agencies to the incident.
“At this time, we cannot speak to the cause of the incident or the extent of damage, but TPC is assembling a team to conduct a full and thorough investigation,” the company statement said.
Houston-based TPC Group has a 75-year history in Port Neches and the Port of Houston dating back to 1944 when the legacy plants in Port Neches and Houston were opened by two different companies, the Neches Butane Products Co. and Sinclair Rubber, respectively.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, as well as advocacy groups Environment Texas and the Environmental Defense Fund expressed alarm at the industrial mayhem.
“Within the last year, I have witnessed an unacceptable trend of significant incidents impacting the Gulf Coast region,” TCEQ Executive Director Toby Baker said in a statement. “While not all emergency events may be prevented, it is imperative that industry be accountable and held to the highest standard of compliance to ensure the safety of the state’s citizens and the protection of the environment.”
He said the stage regulatory agency is currently focused on emergency response. But as normal operations resume, he said, it will look at achieving compliance “given the presence of the petrochemical industry in Texas.”
Catherine Fraser, Clean Air Associate with Environment Texas, pointed out the TPC facility’s history of emissions violations and community complaints. She said the plant has been in noncompliance 12 separate quarters in the last three years and in 2018 emitted 61,379 pounds of butadiene.
“Disasters like these are terrifying and unacceptable, and the TCEQ and EPA need to take much tougher enforcement actions and strengthen safety regulations, like the Chemical Disaster Rule, to build safer and healthier communities,” she said in a statement.
The Environmental Defense Fund in Austin called the incident “another preventable tragedy at a Texas petrochemical facility.”
“The fiery sky, blown-out windows and shelter-in-place orders are glaring reminders that we need state and federal officials to do more to protect our communities,” Dr. Elena Craft, senior director for climate and health, said in a statement. Yet, she added, the EPA “put emergency responders and people living near these industrial facilities in harm’s way by gutting needed safeguards last week. We will be thankful when they take chemical safety more seriously.”