Houston flood: Explosions reported at Arkema chemical plant

[nitpicker]

Source: BBC

Houston flood: Explosions reported at Arkema chemical plant

9 minutes ago

From the section US & Canada

Explosions have been reported at a chemical plant near the flooded US city of Houston. US media report witnesses as hearing two blasts and seeing black smoke issuing from the Arkema plant at Crosby. During heavy rainfall from Hurricane Harvey, the complex lost the ability to refrigerate chemical compounds that need to be kept cool. There was no way to prevent an explosion, the company warned earlier.
(snip)

The Arkema chemical plant, 21 miles (34km) from Houston, shut down its production on Friday, before the storm made landfall. But 40in (102cm) of rainfall in the area flooded the site and cut off its power, the company said in a statement. Back-up generators were also flooded.

The facility manufactures organic peroxides, compounds that are used in everything from making pharmaceuticals to construction materials, which can become dangerous at higher temperatures. "Any fire will probably resemble a large gasoline fire," CEO Richard Rowe told Reuters news agency before the reports of explosions. "The fire will be explosive and intense."
(snip)


Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41104451

[DonCoquixote]

1. this is bad

considering that Rachel talked about this and quoted experts saying this would be worse than this earlier explosion:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/deadly-west-texas-fertilizer-plant-explosion-was-criminal-act-feds-n572231

I do value lives more than polticis, so I do not want to dump on the average texan who is just trying to survive, but the Texas government, on the state and local levels, not only has a lot to answer for, it should be exposed to the nation as the government we DO NOT WANT.

[LisaL]

3. Yes, explosion was inevitable, because their explosion control was to keep those chemicals

at low temperature. And once electricity was off, chemicals were no longer kept at low temperature so the chemicals were going to blow up.

[Cattledog]

2. Everyone within 1.5 miles of the plant has been ordered to evacuate.

[appleannie1943]

11. Texas law says people have the right to refuse an evacuation order and some people did.

[raven mad]

4. Just read this.

Another report (NBC): https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/hurricane-harvey/harvey-danger-major-chemical-plant-near-houston-likely-explode-facility-n797581

[Honeycombe8]

5. OMG. It gets worse and worse. OMG. OMG! Those poor people! Is it north or south or east or west?nt

[leftynyc]

10. Looks like it's north east of Houston (n/t)

[Igel]

20. About 20-25 miles N-NE of downtown.

Officially they're saying it's Crosby, but it's not that close to the town itself.

[gademocrat7]

6. Compounded tragedy.

[wasupaloopa]

7. The general population will still see deregulation as a good thing and climate change as a hoax.

Deep down I hope that the right will admit they were wrong about deregulation and that they will begin to work to prevent more disaster caused by climate change but I don't think they will.

I feel they know that deregulation hurts people and that climate change is real but those ideas are not ones that help them grow their wealth.

Possibly the economics of all this destruction will come into play and insurance companies will refuse to insure them and governments will not have the money to pay for the rebuilding.

The general population is the victim but they will never get that the ones they pay allegiance to don't give a shit about them.

Do we hear anything about changing policy because of Katrina or Sandy? I don't remember hearing about it.

So we will learn to live with disaster after disaster.

[Hortensis]

8. We don't "hear" about changing policy, that information is only available

to people who take the trouble to search for and read it. We have subscriptions to both the New York Times and Washington Post, but we don't even begin to read all the information available in them. Articles in free journals online contain links to more in-depth articles, which contain links to more in-depth articles. And frankly I don't remember what I may have read before in the articles that have been published in the years since, just too much information to remember. (Except of course when it's about my neighborhood.)

But it's not because information isn't out there.

Speaking of, Google search doesn't turn up any initial reports by Texas media. Why are BBC, Reuters and Washington Post, even a paper in India, out ahead of major Texas newspapers on this?

The Texas governor we see on TV is apparently the same Texas official a member of the Koch family worked with to change the law so that the people of Texas could no longer access information about what was being stored in these chemical depots. This one doesn't belong to the Kochs, but others do. Today this former state attorney general is governor. Seems like a timely and newsworthy subject.

[Igel]

21. I don't see deregulation being the problem here.

The area's very lightly populated so almost nobody's near the plant.

It has all the federal regulations and won awards for compliance with safety standards.

It had backups and safeguards for hurricanes like Ike or a bit worse. This was a lot worse.

Changing policy because of Katrina or Sandy?

Paris Agreement. But CO2 emissions are sort of a composite of increased population/energy consumption + greater efficiency + greater use of renewables, so it's a decent mix of factors. Carbon emissions in the US, esp. due to energy, declined sharply after 2008 and were still down-trending as of 2015. It's like pollution and poverty in the '60s--there were policies and procedures in place to help, but the trend started sharply downward years before the legislation was put in place. The legislation is arguably an effect of improvement rather than a cause.

The other things are just regulations, are boring, and really don't make the news except in exceptional cases or right after they're called for and so they're salient. Even in Houston where there *were* all kinds of regulation changes after Ike and after some of the flooding events we've had most people don't know they changed.

[JonLP24]

22. According to Rachel they didn't have a failsafe to destroy the product like similar facilities which

is why it blew up.

[Justice]

23. There is a failsafe - you can neutralize materials so they won't explode. Neutralizer destroys

materials - so reluctant to do it. But now plant will be destroyed. Not very smart.

Also wonder where generators were located (on ground that was flooded) and where trailers were located (on land that was flooded).

If they evacuated a mile and a half perimeter, and not everyone left, there must be people living within the mile and a half. So not completely in the middle of no-where.

[haveahart]

9. Do you think that FOX will tell their viewers why the plant exploded? (Dropped regulations).

I wish some of the FOX-only viewers would watch the first half of Rachel's show.

But it probably would not matter. I had a FB friend get angry with me and tell me that nothing I told her would change her mind and that she was going to believe what she wanted to believe (I had showed her photos an explained to her that Obama was not President during Katrina and that he was not out golfing as President when Katrina happened.) She hates Obama and loves Trump. It is very disheartening that some people are really among those who not care if Trump actually did shoot and kill someone in the middle of a New York Street. It's even worse to know that I know some of them.

[appleannie1943]

12. Police officer hospitalized after breathing fumes.

Nine deputies, who also inhaled the non-toxic irritant, drove themselves to the hospital after being near the Arkema Inc. plant

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/08/31/question-is-when-chemical-plant-outside-houston-could-explode-company-says.html


And the people that watch FOX will believe the fumes are non toxic even though no one knows what the fumes are because Texas law says plants do not have to tell anyone.

[Scruffy1]

13. Sounds like it was MEKP.

Methyl ethyl ketone peroxide. It is one of nastiest chemicals I have encountered. Regular MEK, commonly used as a paint stripper is bad enough but at least doesn't explode at standard temperature and pressure.

[Rollo]

17. Feedstock for plastics...

And probably prices for various plastics made from this will skyrocket...

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. FEMA: "The plume is incredibly dangerous"

U.S. emergency officials said on Thursday the plume caused by two explosions at the flood-hit Arkema SA chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, was "incredibly dangerous," noting officials were still trying to evaluate the hazards.

"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," Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Brock Long said at a news briefing. "By all means, yes, the plume is incredibly dangerous."

http://live.reuters.com/Event/Harvey_The_Texas_Storm/1077407735

[BumRushDaShow]

15. ABC 13 had flown over about 30 minutes ago

and I captured some screenshots -

[Rollo]

16. American Fukushima...

[riversedge]

18. Tx has a Law that Shields Co. From disclosing What Chemical's at Their Plant. 🚨 Yes, You don't have

Link to tweet

Katniss 🏹🔥‏ @americanmclass 15m15 minutes ago

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/hurricane-harvey/harvey-danger-major-chemical-plant-near-houston-likely-explode-facility-n797581 …
🚨
Tx has a Law that Shields Co. From disclosing What Chemical's at Their Plant.
🚨 Yes, You don't have Right to know

[BumRushDaShow]

19. ABC 13 dug up some EPA filing records for the plant

https://iaspub.epa.gov/enviro/tsca.get_chem_info?v_registry_id=110000463258

Per here - http://abc13.com/incident-at-crosby-plant-not-explosion-authorities-say/2355735/