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posted by martyb on Thursday August 31 2017, @03:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the mount-generators-on-a-barge? dept.

Residents near a chemical plant in Crosby, TX — approximately 25 miles (40km) northeast of Houston — have been evacuated due to the possibility of an explosion:

Arkema SA expects chemicals to catch fire or explode at its heavily flooded plant in Crosby, Texas in the coming days because the plant has lost power to its chemical cooling systems, a company official said on Wednesday.

The company evacuated remaining workers on Tuesday, and Harris County ordered the evacuation of residents in a 1.5-mile(2.4-km) radius of the plant that makes organic peroxides used in the production of plastic resins, polystyrene, paints and other products.

Richard Rowe, chief executive officer of Arkema's North America unit, told reporters that chemicals on the site will catch fire and explode if they are not properly cooled.

Arkema expects that to happen within the next six days as temperatures rise. He said the company has no way to prevent that because the plant is swamped by about 6 feet (1.83 m) of water due to flooding from Harvey, which came ashore in Texas last week as a powerful Category 4 hurricane.

"Materials could now explode and cause a subsequent and intense fire. The high water that exists on site, and the lack of power, leave us with no way to prevent it," Rowe said. He said he believes a fire would be "largely sustained on our site but we are trying to be conservative."

From the company's web site:

Our Crosby facility makes organic peroxides, a family of compounds that are used in everything from making pharmaceuticals to construction materials. But organic peroxides may burn if not stored and handled under the right conditions. At Crosby, we prepared for what we recognized could be a worst case scenario. We had redundant contingency plans in place. Right now, we have an unprecedented 6 feet of water at the plant. We have lost primary power and two sources of emergency backup power. As a result, we have lost critical refrigeration of the materials on site that could now explode and cause a subsequent intense fire. The high water and lack of power leave us with no way to prevent it. We have evacuated our personnel for their own safety. The federal, state and local authorities were contacted a few days ago, and we are working very closely with them to manage this matter. They have ordered the surrounding community to be evacuated, too.

Also at ABC and The Washington Post.


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  • (Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Thursday August 31 2017, @06:17AM (8 children)

    by jmorris (4844) on Thursday August 31 2017, @06:17AM (#561988)

    They say they expect it to blow in six days. No way the water stays up that long and the second it goes down they will rush in some cooling because they have several days to brainstorm a solution and engineers live for that sort of thing. Hard to blame the company on this one, they had plenty of backup systems and this hurricane popped up too fast to make shipping the stuff out in time. And it isn't like the thing will render the whole surrounding area a no man's land for generations like a nuke plant so the precautions vs risk seem good and they aren't trying to cover stuff (we hope) up.

    If the whole world around them wasn't a soggy mess it would have been a lot easier to focus on and fix this problem. Which probably wasn't properly accounted for in their emergency procedures. You always plan for all sorts of things to go wrong inside the facility, these days they probably even wargame and drill for terrorists, but you rarely drill for the entire region going to heck.

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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by aristarchus on Thursday August 31 2017, @08:19AM (5 children)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday August 31 2017, @08:19AM (#562012) Journal

    jmorris on explosives! Ya gotta just take those odds, because, well, they are just so odd! What are the chances of jmorris being right, when Death is on the Line?

    (One of the three major blunders: Never get involved in a land war in Afghanistan, NEVER go up against a Sicilian, when Deaths is on the Line, and only slightly less well known, never bet with jmorris, ever, at all, you will die.) Did I just insinuate that jmorris is Vizzini? [youtube.com] Get used to disappointment.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by choose another one on Thursday August 31 2017, @09:28AM (3 children)

      by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 31 2017, @09:28AM (#562030)

      Well, looks like he's wrong - bbc reporting in the last ten mins, explosions and smoke from the site.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @10:09AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @10:09AM (#562046)
        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday August 31 2017, @02:35PM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 31 2017, @02:35PM (#562130)

          Looking at the video is interesting, the plant seems built on a slope so the one little fire they had is now on dry (well, not submerged) ground. The reports of "plant under six feet of water" was probably conservative WRT the security fence, but not relevant soon.

      • (Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Thursday August 31 2017, @04:56PM

        by jmorris (4844) on Thursday August 31 2017, @04:56PM (#562184)

        Looks like the six days prediction didn't hold up. So boom today. The news account in the NationalLaughingStock.com was choice though, a perfect storm of ignorance by the journalists and FEMA. We are doomed.

    • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday September 02 2017, @10:01AM

      by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday September 02 2017, @10:01AM (#562892) Journal

      Modded down, but correct in the event? What is wrong with some of you Soylentils? Do you want to be on the losing side of truth, justice, and history? Are you suicidal Neo-Nazi death eaters? So here you go. Mod this comment down as well. I will make it easy for you and TMB. NO COMMENT! There, I said it, no comment. Nothing to say. Dearth of verbiage. Absence of locution. Non-being of professing. Nothing to say. Ut nihil aliud dicam, qui nihil dicere, quod essentia est verum.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by tonyPick on Thursday August 31 2017, @09:55AM

    by tonyPick (1237) on Thursday August 31 2017, @09:55AM (#562040) Homepage Journal

    My money is on no boom

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41104451 [bbc.co.uk]

    Explosions have been heard coming from a chemical plant near the flooded US city of Houston.
    [...]
    In a statement, the company said: "At approximately 2am CDT [07:00 GMT], we were notified by the Harris County Emergency Operations Center of two explosions and black smoke coming from the Arkema Inc plant in Crosby, Texas.

    At this point your "No Boom" prediction accuracy is looking about as good as your earlier "Climate change as a marxist scam" bet.

  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:15PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:15PM (#562196)

    > No way the water stays up that long and the second it goes down they will rush in some cooling

    (Ignoring the fact it already started blowing...)
    It's been 5 days, you can access the site, you have the generator for the cooling. Do you bet your life on the 6-days guesstimate?