Deer Park, Texas — A pipe burst near Houston sparked a towering fire in neighborhoods Monday, forcing evacuations and shelter-in-place orders and melting playground equipment as firefighters struggled to keep nearby homes from burning.
Operators stopped the flow of natural gas liquids, but there was so much in the 20-inch (51-centimeter) pipeline that firefighters could do nothing but watch nearby homes and put the pipes down until it burned itself out. That could take several hours, possibly into Tuesday, Deer Park Mayor Jerry Mauden Jr. said.
“The fire, it’s very hot, so a lot of the house structures next to it are still on fire, even though we put a lot of water on them,” Mouton said.
Local authorities would not speculate on the cause of the fire or the role of a car that caught fire near the flames. The pipeline’s owner, Dallas-based Energy Exchange, said in a statement that it was “aware of early reports” that a car had struck some valve equipment but did not provide further details, including the origin of those reports.
One firefighter suffered minor injuries, so far it has been reported.
Firefighters were dispatched at 9:55 a.m. An explosion at a valve station in Deer Park and next to La Porte shook nearby homes and businesses. Nearly 1,000 homes are in the evacuation zone, said Lee Woodward, a spokesman for La Porte.
Keselle Melina Guerra said she and her boyfriend were eating breakfast in their mobile home when they heard the explosion.
“All of a sudden we hear this loud bang and then I see something bright like orange coming from our back door outside,” said Guevara, who lives inside the evacuation zone.
Her boyfriend woke his brother and they ran to their car.
“I wandered around the living room, not knowing what to do or what was going on,” Guevara said, “I thought maybe a plane had crashed into our house.”
Students at several public schools were told to shelter in place as law enforcement cordoned off a wide area. Some evacuees gathered at nearby San Jacinto College, which closed its campus after the explosion. Among them was Evan Wyman
“I know my dog is rescued,” Wyman said.
Ramanan Krishnamurthy, professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Houston, said it is better from an environmental perspective to let the fire go out than to try to attack the flames with fire-fighting foam or liquid.
“Otherwise it’s going to release a lot of volatile organic compounds into the environment,” he said.
However, negative environmental effects, including the release of soot, carbon and organic matter, will undoubtedly remain, he said.
Energy Transfer said an air monitor was being set up near the fire and smoke plumes that could be seen from at least 10 miles (16 kilometers) away.
A report from Harris County Pollution Control on Monday afternoon said no volatile organic compounds were detected. Although “sensitive people may want to take precautions,” the report said the particles from the smoke were moderate and posed no immediate danger to healthy people.
Natural gas liquids are primarily used in the production of plastics and basic and intermediate chemicals, Krishnamurthy said.
Houston, Texas’ largest city, is the country’s petrochemical heartland and is home to refineries and mills and thousands of miles of pipelines. Explosions and fires are a familiar sight in the region, some of them deadly, repeatedly raising questions about the adequacy of industry efforts to protect the public. environment.
Living near other plants near the highway, Sanchez said they’re used to being evacuated, but he’s never seen an explosion in the 10 years he’s lived there.
“We drove as hard as we could because we didn’t know what was going on,” Sanchez said from a car parked at a gas station near his college.
The fire quickly spread to nearby power lines and the internet PowerOutage.us Harris County said at one point several thousand customers were without power.
In addition to the damage near the flames, the area’s extensive pipeline infrastructure will also need to be carefully inspected and monitored for damage, Krishnamurthy said.
“They all need to be checked and monitored,” he said, but “in the grand scheme of things,” a fire “isn’t going to cause a major disruption in supply chains.”
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This story has been updated to correct that the pipeline carries natural gas liquids, not liquefied natural gas.
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AP writers Christopher L. in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Valerie Gonzalez in Keller, McAllen, Texas, and Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.
