9 People Have Been Hospitalized After A Fire Near Houston

On Friday, a fire broke out at a petrochemical plant near Houston. Nine workers were taken to the hospital, and a huge plume of smoke could be seen for miles.

When a fire broke out at a petrochemical plant near Houston?

Around 3 p.m., emergency workers were called to the Shell plant in Deer Park, a suburb east of Houston. In an advisory, the city of Deer Park said that there was no order for people to stay inside.

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said earlier in the day that five contracted workers were taken to the hospital for safety reasons, but that none of them were burned. He said that they were taken to the hospital because they were too tired from the heat and were close to the fire.

Friday night, Shell Deer Park officials said on Twitter that they were still putting out the fire, that all of the workers had been found, and that nine workers had been released after getting precautionary medical checks.

Gonzalez said that nothing blew up, even though the sheriff’s office first got calls saying there was an explosion.

Gonzalez said that as of Friday night, the fire was still going on, but it had died down and was under control.

The fire’s cause was still being looked into. The fire broke out while the olefins unit was being serviced as usual. Shell Deer Park said that they were still checking the air for any effects of the fire, but they hadn’t found any dangerous levels of chemicals yet.

The post said, “There is no danger to the nearby neighbourhood.”

At 2:56 p.m., a fire broke out in the olefins unit of the plant. Shell Deer Park said that the item that caught fire was a mix of cracked heavy petrol oil, cracked light petrol oil and petrol.

“The cause of the fire will be looked into in the future,” facility officials said, “but the safety of people and the environment is still our top priority right now.”

Shell was checking the air quality on its own, but Deer Park’s spokesperson, Kaitlyn Bluejacket, said the city hasn’t heard anything new yet.

Shell told the city that there was no need to shelter in place at the time, but if that changed, the city would let people know, Bluejacket said.

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Fire crews from the Deer Park plant and plants close by came to help.

Even though temperatures in the Houston area rose to near 90 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity made it feel hotter than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the wind was good for fighting the fire.

Captain James Singleton of the Harris County Fire Marshal’s office said that his office would be in Deer Park all weekend to investigate.

Singleton said, “You’re looking at a large number of people who need to be talked to.” “Everyone who was at the unit at the time of the fire, including the controllers, management, and anyone who called 911.”

Meteorologists in Houston said that the smoke plumes could be seen from space.

Since there are a lot of petrochemical plants in the area, fires at facilities happen often. In March, an explosion and fire broke out at INEOS Phenol’s building in nearby Pasadena, Texas. One person was hurt.

In 2019, a fire burned for days at a building owned by Intercontinental Terminals Company. No one was hurt, but warnings about the air quality were sent out.