First Shell, then Marathon, then Valero. In the last three weeks, major fires have broken out at these companies’ oil refineries and chemical plants in East Texas, leaving one dead and over a dozen injured.
The blazes in Deer Park, Galveston Bay and Corpus Christi follow a years-long string of explosions, fires and toxic releases in a region where oil refining and chemical production is highly concentrated, often close to residential neighborhoods. And while some residents have grown accustomed to the incidents, others are alarmed by how frequently they are hitting home.
Land, who is 45 years old, was in her home 20 miles from the refinery when she saw the black smoke on the horizon. She had to go on social media to find out what was happening.“Our local government doesn’t ever want us to know how bad [the fires] really are, so we never truly know,” Land said. “They just sweep everything under the rug and never talk about it again.”
She said the agency responded to each of them by deploying staff with monitoring equipment as appropriate and has “conducted surveillance to assess potential impacts to the local community.”On May 5, heavy gas oil, gasoline and light gas oil ignited at Shell’s Deer Park chemicals facility in Deer Park, which sent 9 workers to the hospital. The plume from the fire, which occurred right outside of Houston, was visible for miles.
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