{"id":119448,"date":"2019-03-24T15:14:41","date_gmt":"2019-03-24T19:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=119448"},"modified":"2019-03-24T15:22:17","modified_gmt":"2019-03-24T19:22:17","slug":"was-the-houston-chemical-spill-engineered-to-trigger-the-mass-illness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=119448","title":{"rendered":"Was the Houston chemical spill engineered to trigger the mass illness?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Houston Disaster Spills Into Channel as Illness Proliferates<\/h1>\n

Joe Carroll and Rachel Adams-Heard
\nVideo by Associated Press<\/p>\n

(Bloomberg) — Oil byproducts from a damaged storage facility contaminated the\u00a0Houston Ship Channel<\/a>\u00a0and created a cloud of cancer-causing benzene over the waterway, the latest mutation of one of the worst Gulf Coast chemical disasters in more than a decade.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Coast Guard is forbidding vessel traffic on a stretch of the key industrial shipping route after a wall collapse and fire at Intercontinental Terminals Co.\u2019s already-damaged chemical storage complex on Friday. A mix of toxic gasoline ingredients, firefighting foam and dirty water flowed from the site into the channel, and a benzene plume above the water poses a threat to ship crews, said Coast Guard Capt. Kevin Oditt.<\/p>\n

The channel, which is not a source of drinking water for Houston or its suburbs, is the newest victim of a calamity that began unfolding almost a week ago when tanks holding byproducts of the oil-refining process at ITC\u2019s facility erupted in flames. A mile-high plume of inky black smoke towered over the fourth-largest American city for days until crews extinguished the blaze on March 20.<\/p>\n

<\/span>That was followed by benzene alerts that shut down Deer Park and other suburbs for half a day, the collapse of a containment wall and Friday\u2019s new fires in three wrecked storage tanks and a drainage ditch.<\/p>\n

\u2018Never-Ending\u2019<\/h3>\n

Nausea, headaches and other symptoms drove about 1.000 people to seek treatment at a pop-up clinic, with 15 of the most-severe cases loaded onto ambulances and hauled to hospital emergency rooms.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a never-ending, re-occurring case of things not working out as planned,\u201d Deer Park Mayor\u00a0Jerry Mouton<\/a>\u00a0said during a media briefing on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Weary residents are on edge, wondering what\u2019s next and when normal life will return. For many Houstonians, it\u2019s the worst industrial disaster since the 2005 explosion at BP Plc\u2019s Texas City refinery that killed 15.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s more tanks in there. Is it going to reignite? It\u2019s very uncertain,\u201d said Mercy Reyna, 50, who\u2019s been suffering from headaches, eye discomfort and chest tightness. \u201cThe trust is not there. We feel like we\u2019re not being told the truth of what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the initial blaze was squelched earlier in the week, ITC made two unsuccessful attempts to drain a charred tank that\u2019s holding pygas, a petroleum derivative composed largely of benzene. Early on Friday, ITC executives estimated they would have that tank emptied in about 12 hours; then the wall failed and flames erupted nearby.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

\u00a9 Bloomberg\u00a0Black Smoke Towers Over Houston Amid Petrochemical BlazeFortifications<\/p><\/div>\n

Crews launched a third attempt to empty the tank around 3:30 p.m. local time on Saturday, the Mitsui & Co.-owned company said. Executives are watching weather forecasts and wind gauges because anything that disturbs the layer of protective foam atop the chemicals could allow fires to break out and benzene to waft across the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe same number of tanks need to be drained as yesterday,\u201d said Brent Weber, ITC\u2019s incident commander.<\/p>\n

Reyna and her 18-year-old daughter Rebecca had been waiting for 2 1\/2 hours at the pop-up medical center when the new fire erupted. They left without being seen because they didn\u2019t want to get marooned there if the city ordered everyone to stay indoors.<\/p>\n

Burning Sensation<\/h3>\n

\u201cI was filling out the paper work inside, and my eyes were running and running with tears,\u201d Mercy Reyna said. \u201cIt was just that desperation of wanting to get your eyes out and just rub them and rinse them and put them back. It\u2019s just that burning sensation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the company said Friday that there were about 60,000 barrels (2.52 million gallons) of hazardous chemicals still held in the damaged section of its complex, by Saturday morning it no longer knew how much remained. Meanwhile, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he\u2019ll file a lawsuit accusing ITC of violating clean-air laws.<\/p>\n

The ship channel is one of the busiest commercial shipping facilities in North America, connecting Houston\u2019s manufacturing and oil-refining nexus to Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. It remained closed on Saturday.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board announced late Thursday it will be investigating the blaze. The Texas National Guard dispatched troops to assist local authorities with air monitoring after cancer-causing benzene wafted across the area, prompting take-shelter alerts and road closures.<\/p>\n

–With assistance from Sheela Tobben.<\/p>\n

To contact the reporters on this story: Joe Carroll in Houston at jcarroll8@bloomberg.net;Rachel Adams-Heard in Houston at radamsheard@bloomberg.net<\/p>\n

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Simon Casey at scasey4@bloomberg.net, Joe Carroll, Carlos Caminada<\/p>\n

For more articles like this, please visit us at\u00a0bloomberg.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a92019 Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n

___
\nhttps:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/news\/us\/houston-disaster-spills-into-channel-as-illness-proliferates\/ar-BBV6T6R<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=119448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119448\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=119448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=119448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=119448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}