Chemical Fire Darkening Houston Flares as Smoky Odor Spreads
A blaze at a petrochemical storage facility that covered Houston in a plume of thick, black smoke.
(Bloomberg) -- A blaze at a petrochemical storage facility that covered Houston in a plume of thick, black smoke for a third day intensified overnight as pungent fumes pervaded neighborhoods more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) away.
Two additional storage tanks are ablaze, bringing the total to eight, Intercontinental Terminals Co., the facility’s owner, said in an update in the early hours of Tuesday. The drop in water pressure that interfered with firefighting efforts overnight has been rectified and additional help in fighting the fire is expected to be on hand this morning, it said.
In the downtown Houston business district, the smoky smell that pervaded high-rise offices on Monday had eased. But in residential neighborhoods on the city’s north side, a chemical odor descended Tuesday morning on an otherwise clear day.
Since assuring residents of the fourth-largest U.S. city on Monday that there were no “immediate health concerns at ground level,” the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality hasn’t issued any new advisories or assessments. The agency doesn’t know when it will issue an update, spokesman Brian McGovern said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
The blaze is affecting tanks that store liquids used to make gasoline. The Deer Park facility has a total of 242 tanks located near the Houston Ship Channel, one of the busiest ports along the Gulf Coast. First responders said Monday that the fire will likely burn for two more days.
“Air monitoring continues," said ITC, a unit of Tokyo-based Mitsui & Co. "Readings are currently well below hazardous levels."
Still, Houston residents were urged on Monday to stay inside and nearby schools and highways were closed. Schools in the suburbs closest to the blaze reopened Tuesday.
The fire “demonstrates how chemical disasters happen far too often in our region, often due to lax regulatory oversight and enforcement,” said Stephanie Thomas, researcher for Public Citizen, which advocates for environmental protection.
She criticized the Trump administration for seeking to reduce funding to the Environmental Protection Agency and other government plans “which sought to bring greater safety to communities like Deer Park that are surrounded by the petrochemical industry.”
Potential health effects of the smoke include coughing, difficulty breathing and irritation to eyes and throat, according to the One Breath Partnership, an organization that works to improve air quality.
“You can really smell & taste it now,” real-estate agent Jon Gardella said on Twitter, referring to the black smog enveloping Houston on Monday morning.
Ships in the area at the time of the incident have been cleared out and they are currently not permitted to enter or depart the area, U.S. Coast Guard Watch Supervisor Alberto Hernandez said by phone Monday morning.
Prices for naphtha on the U.S. Gulf Coast rose 2.45 cents to $1.5002 a gallon Monday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The tank farm occupies 265 acres on the Houston Ship Channel east of the city. It can store more than 13 million barrels of chemicals, petroleum, fuel oil and gases. It serves marine, train and trucking transport with five tanker berths and its own rail spur.
--With assistance from Mike Jeffers, Sheela Tobben, Barbara Powell and Jack Kaskey.
To contact the reporters on this story: Simon Casey in New York at scasey4@bloomberg.net;Kevin Crowley in Houston at kcrowley1@bloomberg.net;Joe Carroll in Houston at jcarroll8@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Simon Casey at scasey4@bloomberg.net, Joe Carroll, Mike Jeffers
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.