We have lots of breaking news to
tell you about on this Friday.
Right now in Deer Park.
We're For the past two hours,
crews have been battling this fire
at the Shell chemical plant where
at least two people have been hurt.
Hello. I'm Lynn Cannon. And I'm
Mia Granny, leading us off this hour.
That fire that continues to burn
at the Deer Park Shell refinery.
Shell Deer Park says the fire poses no
threat to anyone outside of the facility,
which is located at 5900 Highway 225.
That's near the Beltway.
Jason Miles is staged live with
what he's been hearing and
seeing from employees. Jason.
Hey there, guys.
Yeah, we arrived here around 3:30,
and as far as I can tell, we're the first.
We were the first news crew on the scene.
In fact, on the way heading east on 225,
several fire trucks and ambulances passed us.
Heading to this still very active scene,
an explosive situation on a very hot
day and workers described not only
feeling the heat here at the refinery,
but the weather as well as they evacuated.
Obviously they wear heavy
clothes and hats and such.
You can see here behind me a fire that
seemed to be going down a little bit,
still flaring up quite a bit.
However, the large black plume of smoke
has since dissipated and it has shifted.
Thanks to the winds and our meteorologists
can talk more about that now.
When we first arrived,
a number of workers had already evacuated,
as was all employees were evacuated.
The folks I spoke with were sitting
over here off the feeder Rd.
Others were in the parking lot.
They said they heard a large thud,
came out of wherever they were working,
saw lots of smoke,
felt the heat and got out of
there as quickly as possible.
Even folks who work at the.
Facility next door adjacent to this site
saw and felt what happened here today.
I spoke with one worker a little earlier,
take a listen
and
apparently we have some technical
difficulties getting that sound.
But he works at Kalpen,
immediately adjacent,
adjacent to the Shell Deer Park facility.
He says he came out of his workspace
after hearing something, saw all of
the black smoke and saw the flames,
and in fact saw a couple of
workers from this facility jumping
over a fence covered in soot.
Completely black in color.
And he knew something was going
on and he hopes that most of
the folks made it out of here.
OK And as we've mentioned, word is
that at least two people were injured.
We are expecting updates
any moment from officials.
Back to you.
Hope those workers are OK Big
miles in Deer Park tonight.
Thank you.
Now let's bring in chief Meteorologist
David Paul. David, the winds.
Always a concern when these
plant fires break out.
Is it a concern right now?
It's the biggest factor in
what the smoke is going to do.
If we have strong winds,
1520 mile an hour winds,
that keeps the smoke at the surface,
it drives it along the ground and
that obviously can make a huge
impact on the people who are on the
ground breathing in that smoke.
That was not the case.
With this particular fire,
we had winds that were,
at the time of the fire below
10 miles an hour.
They've now increased 10 to 12.
Pasadena, Channelville,
the port down to Deer Park South of 13.
But at the moment,
the smoke from the fire has
begun to diminish significantly.
So light winds allowed that smoke
to go vertical and not impact so
many people down on the ground.
It's hot.
For the firefighters,
it's 85 right now in Baytown,
the ports at 88,
channel views at 90 feels like
temperatures are near 100.
So for anybody out there working
and dealing with this fire,
it is very, very hot.
And in fact,
this all showed up on radar as the
fire erupted a little before 4:00.
O'clock right here near Deer Park.
Watch the plume now,
the plume is now vanished.
So we've really seen an in
a decrease in the smoke.
Looks like conditions there are
improving very, very rapidly.
Something we'll be watching this evening,
thunderstorms in Central Texas,
they may be able to rumble in a few
showers in our northern counties tonight.
We'll go over the timing on that and
our very hot weekend forecast when I
see you again in a couple of minutes.
All right, David, Paul,
thank you for that up.
They are Matt Doherty,
also on the ground near the Shell facility.
Matt, what do you can?
What can you tell us?
Hey, Lynn. Well,
we just moved a few minutes ago.
We're about 7 minutes away from
where we were just a little
bit ago in front of the plant.
Right now we are in a
Community Center parking lot.
We're waiting to hear from Sheriff
Ed Gonzalez and hopefully some other
officials about what exactly happened,
how many people were injured,
what the chemical is that has been burning.
For so long and hopefully some type
of timeline as to when they're
going to be able to put this whole
thing out as well as you know any
possible health impacts this may
have to the surrounding community.
A
little bit earlier, you know I was
talking about kind of the irony of of
what we're we're doing tonight because
it was just last night that we were
out here in Deer Park and we were
attending a community town hall meeting.
The company ITC, the one that had that big
plant fire you'll remember from back in 2019,
has reapplied for its operating
permit that has to go through a
certain number of community meetings
before that can actually happen.
The TCEQ ends up having to approve that.
And I have to tell you from
what we heard last night, Lynn,
and I know you heard some of it too,
the, the the neighbors who showed up,
they they, you know, we're upset.
They're upset with these plant
fires and they they didn't want.
Itc's operating permit reapproved.
And you know,
who knows what's going to
happen after this fire.
You know, when these things happen.
It could have some impact on how the
community feels about these things,
Lynn. That story last night where
people were talking about the
permitting process for the ITC
facility also down in that area.
It's a way of life for people in
Southeast Texas and people likely seeing
the smoke and the flames from the
freeways this afternoon and evening.
How's that traffic looking
for us, Junior Caruso?
Well, as of
right now, traffic is looking pretty good
that you can see there on the left side,
drivers are moving at a decent
speed right now. The smoke is
kind of cleared from the roadway.
So before when this first happened that
smoke really decreased the visibility
on the road and we were seeing delays.
But right now we're maybe seeing drivers
moving about 5:00 to 6:00 mph slower.
So this is if this is your normal route
heading westbound towards the Beltway,
you may experience a little bit
of a delay getting up there,
maybe two or three minutes.
And then once you get to the Beltway,
those ramps are backed up a little bit.
The frontage roads have been closed
and there's been a little bit
of congestion in the area as as
this fire has been burning.
So that ramp is backed up,
expected to lay there,
but westbound and eastbound on 225
moving pretty good at the moment.