Arkema Texas Plant Explodes, "Black Smoke Fills The Air"

You can"t say they didn"t warn us: this afternoon, the VP of US manufacturing Daryl Roberts at French chemicals giant Arkema, said the company was on "high alert" as more fires could start at the doomed facility at any moment. Well, that moment took place around 6pm ET, when ABC Houston reported that the doomed Arkema plant has exploded, causing a "massive" fire and "sending dark, black smoke into the air."

Wow. Chemical plant catches fire in Crosby, Texas. Take a look. #ABC13 #hounews pic.twitter.com/ZXT1MVKVHo

— Steve Campion (@SteveABC13) September 1, 2017

According to reports on the ground, light winds are not pushing into areas around the plant, but there is concern the smoke could injure others.

The smoke could be seen in the residential Newport area of Crosby, about 7 miles away. Harris County officials are advising residents who did not evacuate the 1.5-mile area around the plant to close their windows and turn off their air conditioning systems.

"You could call this a warning sign that more explosions or fires could
be coming soon," Jeff Carr, a spokesman for Arkema, told the Houston
Chronicle.

Hazardous materials crews are headed to the scene.

Harris County Hazmat trucks have arrived and are moving into the evacuation zone. pic.twitter.com/fAYsnEBBCe

— Jacob Rascon (@Jacobnbc) September 1, 2017

Rachel Moreno at the Harris County Fire Marshal"s Office said that the explosion was a result of the product inside the trailers reaching its combustion state, which is causing the black smoke. She said that residents should be safe if they adhere to the one-and-a-half mile evacuation zone, and advised those who are near the site to shelter in place, close all their windows and turn off their air conditioning.

Moreno said no change was made to the evacuation zone.

This is the second of nine trailers at the plant that has caught fire. The trailers each contain liquid organic peroxides, which needs to be cooled to a certain temperature, otherwise it will explode. Officials said that three of the nine trailers have lost power, according to KPRC.

At least 18 people have been injured since the first fire earlier in the week. One of the injured complained of a burning sensation in the eyes and throat and was still feeling the effects, days later.

As reported this afternoon, the Harris County Fire Marshal"s Office has ordered residents within a one-and-a-half mile radius to evacuate the area. In a conference call with reporters on Friday, Arkema President and CEO Rich Rowe said he fully expects the remaining trailers to catch fire, adding the best course of action would be to let the trailers “burn out.”

“The only recourse is to let the eight containers burn out," Rowe said, according to ABC News. "It’s 500,000 pounds of material; let that material burn out."

As reported previously, plant officials said they expected the explosion and fire as chemicals began to heat up after the plant lost power during this week"s flood. There are nine containers with 500,000 pounds of material inside. One of the containers already burned.

Earlier this week, officials evacuated workers and residents within a 1.5-mile radius from the plant after flooding which the company says could lead to a massive fire or explosion. On Thursday morning, members of the media were not let within a 2-mile perimeter of the plant as authorities investigated the incident, while nearby residents were briefly advised to shelter-in-place.

The plant makes organic peroxides, some that need to be constantly refrigerated. When they aren"t, they become volatile.

Friday"s fire was the second fire and explosion after a much smaller one erupted Monday.

The plant"s record with state and federal regulators isn"t stellar either, something the plant"s president acknowledged in a phone conference Friday. "We"re not perfect," said Arkema CEO Richard Rennard. "We"re doing our very best and and will continue to work to get better."

While the company has refused to give the full breakdown of chemicals stored on location, it has warned that it has around 500,000 pounds of peroxides on the site, all of which are expected to burn.

The company also published a list of the toxic chemicals stored at the doomed facility on its web site, reposted below.

• 2-ETHYLHEXANOYL CHLORIDE DISTILLED


• ACETIC ACID 84%


• ACETONE


• AROMATIC 100


• BENZOYL CHLORIDE


• CAUSTIC POTASH 45%


• CAUSTIC SODA 50%


• CUMENE HYDROPEROXIDE


• CUMENE HYDROPEROXIDE


• DIMETHYL HEXADIENE


• DIMETHYL HEXANEDIOL DH-S


• EPSOM SALTS


• HEXANE


• HYDROGEN PEROXIDE 70%


• ISOAMYLENE


• ISOAMYLENE


• ISOBUTYLENE     ISOPROPYL ALCOHOL


• MINERAL OIL, WHITE


• MINERAL SPIRITS ODORLESS


• MONOSODIUM PHOSPHATE


• NEODECANOYL CHLORIDE >=98.0% UNDISTILLED


• PIVALOYL CHLORIDE 95-100%


• PROPYLENE GLYCOL


• SODIUM BICARBONATE


• SODIUM CARBONATE ANHYDROUS LIGHT


• SODIUM SULFATE ANHYDROUS


• SODIUM SULFITE ANHYDROUS


• SULFUR DIOXIDE


• SULFURIC ACID 93% REAGENT ACS


• T-BUTYL HYDROPEROXIDE 70%

All of these substances are now expected to burn down, many in volatile, explosive fashion, in the coming days.

Two Explosions At Flooded Arkema Chemical Plant In Texas

When the CEO of Arkema America, Richard Rowe, warned late Wednesday that the company is powerless to prevent an imminent explosion at its Crosby, TX chemical plant, all we could do was wait for the inevitable. We didn"t have long to wait, because just a few hours later, on Thursday morning, Arkema said it has been notified about two explosions at the doomed Crosby plant.

Source: Bloomberg

At approximately 2:00am local time, the company announced that two explosions and black smoke were reported. According to ABC, several people were taken to hospital.

A sheriff’s deputy was among those taken to the hospital after inhaling fumes, according to a tweet from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. Nine other deputies drove themselves to the hospital as a precaution.

One deputy taken to hospital after inhaling fumes from Archem plant in Crosby. 9 others drove themselves to hospital as precaution.

— HCSOTexas (@HCSOTexas) August 31, 2017

Arkema had already evacuated workers, and local authorities had cleared the area prior to the blow. From the statement:

At approximately 2 a.m. CDT, we were notified by the Harris County Emergency Operations Center (EOC) of two explosions and black smoke coming from the Arkema Inc. plant in Crosby, Texas. Local officials had previously established an evacuation zone in an area 1.5 miles from our plant, based on their assessment of the situation.

An Arkema spokesperson stated late Wednesday that a fire at the site was inevitable. “The fire will happen. It will resemble a gasoline fire. It will be explosive and intense in nature... as the temperature rises, the natural state of these materials will decompose. A white smoke will result, and that will catch fire. So the fire is imminent. The question is when,” spokesperson Janet Smith said.

The Arkema Inc. chemical plant on Aug. 30

Rachel Moreno, a spokeswoman for the county fire marshal’s office, said it is unclear whether all residents obeyed the evacuation order for the 1.5 mile radius of the plant, adding that the office has received an unconfirmed report of a woman who may still be in the evacuation zone.

The company also said it is working closely with federal, state and local authorities to manage the situation, according to a statement on its website.

As Arkema stores organic peroxides at several locations on the site, the threat of additional explosions remains, it said, adding that the best course of action is to let the fire burn itself out.

We have been working closely with public officials to manage the implications of this situation, and have communicated with the public the potential for product to explode and cause an intense fire. Organic peroxides are extremely flammable and, as agreed with public officials, the best course of action is to let the fire burn itself out.

We want local residents to be aware that product is stored in multiple locations on the site, and a threat of additional explosion remains. Please do not return to the area within the evacuation zone until local emergency response authorities announce it is safe to do so.

Organic peroxides are a family of compounds that are used in a wide range of applications, such as making pharmaceuticals and construction materials.

Meanwhile, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez stressed during a press conference that "it wasn"t an explosion, I want to be very clear, it was not an explosion..." He instead explained the incident as a series of "pops."

"There were different organic peroxides of different grades that were released and it created a pop in the containers where they were being stored and some gray smoke initially emanated from it and eventually turned into black smoke" after a fire began, he said.

Gonzalez went on to state that it is "not anything toxic, it is not anything that we feel is a danger to the community at all..." The "pops" occurred inside one of nine 18-wheel box trucks at the site, according to Bob Royall, an assistant chief with the Harris County Fire Marshal"s Office.

"There are nine vans. Of the nine, three had lost refrigeration to keep them cool. the other ones are still under refrigeration," he said, adding that the chemicals are "in containers in cardboard boxes inside the vans."

Royall added that the incident has played out in the way that authorities anticipated.  "Right now everything is going according to what we thought was going to happen so far. We are in a defensive posture, the fire department is out there on the scene, there is air monitoring being deployed by a contractor by the company to try to find out and watch and see where the smoke might go..." he said.

* * *

As a reminder, on Wednesday the company said it has “no way to prevent” a potentially large explosion and fire at its facility near Houston, after flooding due to Tropical Storm Harvey. The Arkema plant in Crosby, Texas, some 25 miles northeast of Houston, was evacuated late Tuesday. Working with authorities, the company also urged everyone within a mile and a half of the plant to evacuate, and shut down a stretch of Highway 90 that runs alongside the plant, which produces organic peroxides for things like acrylic-based paint.

“We have an unprecedented 6 feet of water throughout the plant,” Arkema’s North American operations Chief Executive Rich Rowe said in a teleconference Wednesday with reporters. Rowe said that the plant lost primary power and two emergency backup power sources, which led to a shutdown of “critical refrigeration needed for our materials.” He said that means those materials “could now explode and cause a subsequent and intense fire,” and added that “the high water that exists on site, and the lack of power, leave us with no way to prevent it.”

Rowe said about 300 people in all have been evacuated, but said it wasn’t a mandatory evacuation, so he’s not certain whether the 1.5-mile radius around the facility is currently devoid of people. He said it is mostly a rural area, so there are “a limited number of homes” within the area. Rowe said local officials told him the water level in the area could actually continue to rise over the course of the next three to six days, and as such Arkema, which is based in France, believes the chemicals will start to degrade well before that happens.

“And once the chemicals begin to degrade we would be in a situation where we could be looking at a fire and/or an explosion,” he said. As soon as the chemicals begin to degrade they start to “self-accelerate” in a type of no-turning-back mode, he added.

Rowe didn’t get specific about the amount of chemicals on site or just how big the blast might be, except to say that the analysis of the quantity of chemical is what led authorities to decide on the 1.5-mile evacuation zone they deemed appropriate.