Explosion Risk At Houston-Area Chemical Plant: Harvey Flooding

CROSBY, TX — A plant in Crosby that makes highly volatile liquid plastics is at risk of exploding after two backup generators keeping the plant online were swamped in Hurricane Harvey-fueled rains and floods. The Arkema Group plant shut down Friday in anticipation of Harvey’s landfall.

Multiple homes and businesses are within 2 miles of the plant, and Arkema said on its website that it is working with the Department of Homeland Security to find a safe location to set up a command post to monitor the situation. Crosby is located about 25 miles northeast of Houston.

One employee was evacuated Monday, and the rest of the staff left Tuesday after the Arkema plant lost both its primary and backup power supplies, the company said. (For more hurricane news or local news from Houston, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Houston Patch, and click here to find your local Texas Patch. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

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A 2016 analysis by Texas A&M’s Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center and the Houston Chronicle found the plant to be one of the Houston area sites with the greatest potential to cause harm in an incident.

Before they were evacuated, employees moved the volatile organic peroxides into backup containers to keep them cool, mitigating the danger of fires or explosions that occur when they become too hot. With the plant cut off by flooding, responders would be unable to control the situation. A typical response would be to quench the organic peroxides with another chemical to make it benign, according to the Chronicle report.

“Arkema is limited in what it can do to address the site conditions until the storm abates,” the company said in the statement. “We are monitoring the temperature of each refrigeration container remotely. At this time, while we do not believe there is any imminent danger, the potential for a chemical reaction leading to a fire and/or explosion within the site confines is real.”