On Sunday, November 09, 2008, Phone Duty Officer Webster called in an NRC report ( NRC # 889564) regarding a fire at the Tex-Trude Plastics plant located at 2001 Sheldon Road near Wallisville Road. Webster received the information from a local Dallas media outlet. Follow-up contact with the Channelview Fire department confirmed a plastics fire was still on-going at the Tex-Trude facility. The fire began on November 08, 2008 at approxiately 2:30 pm.
Multiple fire departments responded to the massive fire, employees were evacuated and water tankers were brought in due to an insufficient supply of water. Three warehouses full of plastic pellets stored in cardboard and metal containers were fueling the flames. No injuries have been reported. The Harris County Public Health & Environmental Services (HCPHES) and the Tex-Trude's contractor have been conducting air monitoring and sampling. Initially, it was reported that the RP was having difficulties with controlling runoff from the fire.
The Response Duty Officer, OSC Martin, was deployed to the Tex-Trude Plastics fire, located in Channelview, Texas (approximately 10 miles from Houston).
OSC Martin arrived on-site at approximately 4:30 pm on Sunday 9, 2008. The warehouse fire had been on-going since 2:30 pm the day before. There were a few hotspots remaining in the burn-out remnants of what was a office building and two large warehouses (approximately 25,000 sq feet apiece). Three fire departments remained onscene: Channelview, Crosby, and Sheldon. A representative from the HCPHES was onscene and had been conducting air monitoring for particulates. A representaive form the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality had been on-site eariler in the day. Tex-Trude Plastics hired a nearby contractor, R&D Environmental Services, to handle the resposne and subsequent clean-up activities. In addition, R&D contracted another company to perform air monitoring and media sampling. The air monitoring results (particulates and Volatile Organic Compounds) indicated that the air quality was within accepable limits.
On Sunday, R&D had difficulty maintaining all of the firewater run-off until they constructed diversion dikes that routed the run-off one direction to the areas' stormwater ditch. Downgradient from the plant, they constructed a primary and a secondary berm for containment. At the primary berm, they had 5 vacuum trucks removing the run-off water and transporting to frac tanks staged nearby.
The cause of the fire was still unknown but a plant employee stated that he heard a explosion just before the fire erupted. All plant employees were safetly evacuated. The warehouses involved utilized polyethylene pellets to manufacture cups, plates, plastic sheeting, and other goods. Onsite personnel stated that relatively small amounts of polypropylene material may have also been burned.
The Fire Department and response contractor were going to continue to extinguish the fire which they expected would be completed by midnight. The FD would maintain a crew onsite for monitoring and the response contractor would continue to remove the run-off from the drainage ditch. In the morning, they will again conduct air monitoring onsite and offite to ensure public safety.
In a phone follow-up Monday morning, the HCPHES representaive indicted that there was no visible smoke coming from the site and that the air monitoring indicated no imediate concerns.
An approaching front is expected to bring rain which may stress the run-off collection process.
|
