{"id":5308,"date":"2017-08-31T15:14:46","date_gmt":"2017-08-31T15:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=5308"},"modified":"2017-08-31T15:18:19","modified_gmt":"2017-08-31T15:18:19","slug":"houston-flooding-blasts-chemical-reactions-at-texas-chemical-plant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/houston-flooding-blasts-chemical-reactions-at-texas-chemical-plant\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston flooding: Blasts, chemical reactions at Texas chemical plant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Blasts, chemical reactions rock chemical plant in Texas as Harvey flooding persists<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A flooded chemical plant near Houston exploded twice early Thursday, sending a plume of smoke into the air and triggering a fire that the firm plans to let &#8220;burn itself out.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Flames shot up to 12m high, according to local officials.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Arkema Group, one of the world&#8217;s largest chemical companies, had\u00a0said in a statement on its website that the Harris County Emergency Operations Center reported the explosions and black smoke coming from the plant at about 2 a.m.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Explosions and Smoke Reported at our Arkema Inc. Crosby Plant <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/j2K6RYwMZ8\">https:\/\/t.co\/j2K6RYwMZ8<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 ARKEMA (@Arkema_group) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Arkema_group\/status\/903200765308751872\">August 31, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The plant makes organic peroxides used in the production of plastic resins, polystyrene, paints and other products.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The French chemicals group that owns the plant confirmed the incident earlier and added there was a risk of further explosions.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;We want local residents to be aware that the product is\u00a0stored in multiple locations on the site, and a threat of\u00a0additional explosion remains,&#8221;\u00a0Arkema\u00a0said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;Please do not return to the area within the evacuation zone\u00a0until local emergency response authorities announce it is safe\u00a0to do so,&#8221; it added.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Harris County Sheriff&#8217;s Office said on its Twitter feed that a sheriff\u2019s deputy had been taken to the hospital and nine others drove themselves to the hospital as a precaution.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">One deputy taken to hospital after inhaling fumes from Archem plant in Crosby. 9 others drove themselves to hospital as precaution.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 HCSOTexas (@HCSOTexas) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/HCSOTexas\/status\/903182119966527488\">August 31, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>Local resident John Villarreal, 45, told news agency AFP he saw &#8220;a lot of smoke, and you could see the flames in the smoke.&#8221; &#8220;We could hear a few pops,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I would call it like an aerosol can in a fire type deal.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;Right now, the question is whether or not we can actually get in and assess the full scale of the impact from an environmental standpoint to an infrastructure stand point,&#8221; Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Brock Long said at a news briefing.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;By all means, yes, the plume is incredibly dangerous.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Despite the plant managers saying there were two explosions, local authorities insisted it was just a &#8220;chemical reaction.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\"><p>There was a chemical reaction, not an explosion at Arkema plant in Crosby. There has been different grades of organic peroxide released. \u2014 Ed Gonzalez (@SheriffEd_HCSO) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SheriffEd_HCSO\/status\/903230988163182592\">August 31, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t an explosion. I want to be very clear. It was not an explosion,&#8221; Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said of the incident, which he said was a result of containers &#8220;basically popping.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">As for the gas and smoke rising from the plant, Gonzalez said, &#8220;It is not anything toxic, it&#8217;s not anything we feel is a danger to the community at all.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blasts, chemical reactions rock chemical plant in Texas as Harvey flooding persists A flooded chemical plant near [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,125],"tags":[238,7],"class_list":["post-5308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-united-states","tag-climate","tag-u-s"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Arkema-Plant-In-Crosby-Texas.jpg?fit=690%2C370&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-1nC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5308"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5313,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5308\/revisions\/5313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}