A fire burns at a Shell chemical facility in Deer Park, Friday, May 5, 2023, east of Houston.
Raquel Natalicchio/AP
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Raquel Natalicchio/AP
A fire burns at a Shell chemical facility in Deer Park, Friday, May 5, 2023, east of Houston.
Raquel Natalicchio/AP
HOUSTON — A fire broke out at a petrochemical plant in the Houston area on Friday, sending five workers to the hospital and sending up a huge plume of smoke that could be seen for miles away.
Emergency responders were called to help around 3 p.m. at the Shell facility in Deer Park, an eastern Houston suburb. The City of Deer Park said in a statement that there is no shelter-in-place order for residents.
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said five contract workers were hospitalized as a precaution, adding that they were not burned. He said they were taken to the hospital due to heat exhaustion and being near the fire.
Gonzalez said nothing exploded, though the sheriff’s office initially responded to emergency calls saying there was an explosion.
Gonzalez said on Friday night the fire was still burning but was out and under control.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation. Officials said they were monitoring the air for any effects from the fire but nothing to worry about so far.
The company said on Twitter that the fire at Shell’s Deer Park Chemicals facility started around 2:56 p.m. at the olefin unit. According to Shell Deer Park, products that catch fire include cracked heavy gas, cracked light gas and gasoline.
“The cause of the fire will be the subject of a future investigation and our immediate priorities remain human and environmental safety,” Shell Deer Park said.
A fire burns at a Shell chemical facility in Deer Park, Friday, May 5, 2023, east of Houston.
Elizabeth Conley/AP
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Elizabeth Conley/AP
A fire burns at a Shell chemical facility in Deer Park, Friday, May 5, 2023, east of Houston.
Elizabeth Conley/AP
Kaitlyn Bluejacket, a spokeswoman for Deer Park, said Shell is conducting its own air quality monitoring, but the city has yet to receive updates. She said they had been advised by Shell that there was no need to shelter in place at the time, but that the city will update residents if that changes.
Fire crews from the factory, as well as nearby factories, responded.
Wind conditions were favorable to put out the fire, although temperatures spiked to nearly 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32.2 degrees Celsius) in the Houston area, the high humidity made it hotter than 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius) .
Harris County Fire Chief James Singleton said his office will be in Deer Park through the weekend and is working to find out what happened.
“You’re looking at a large number of people that need to be interviewed,” Singleton said. “Everyone who was at the unit at the time of the fire, the operators, the management, anyone who called 911.”
Meteorologists in Houston say the plumes of smoke are visible from space, via satellite.
Facility fires are not uncommon in the region, given the strong presence of the petrochemical industry. March, an explosion and a fire broke out at an INEOS Phenol-owned facility in nearby Pasadena, Texas, injuring one person.
A fire in 2019 at a facility owned by Intercontinental Terminal Company burned for days, and although it did not cause injury, it did raise air quality warnings.
