Southeast Texas refinery fire was quite the spectacle

It is not too unusual seeing tall columns of smoke while driving on Interstate 10 between Houston and Beaumont. The marshes mostly toward the Gulf of Mexico quite often catch fire and spread, excuse the pun, like wildfire especially on days like today when the cool winds sweep o’er the prairies.

But driving to Houston this afternoon I noticed a big riser of smoke that came from the direction where the marsh land has generally been turned into metropolitan sprawl from the eastern edges of  the nation’s fourth-largest city. Once I crossed the 75-foot Trinity River bridge between Anahuac and Baytown I could clearly see the source of the big smoke plume. It was a big, freaking fire which appeared to be coming from some kind of petrochemical plant.

I finally found out the fire was from the explosion at the Enterprise Products plant at Mont Belvieu, 35 miles east of Houston, after having to put up with about a minute of Rush Limberger before hearing the radio news on KTRH-AM 740. Enterprise Products said in a news release that one worker is unaccounted for after the explosion at a storage facility at the complex.

A news release from the company noted its main facilities were not damaged. Those facilities include:

” … the natural gas liquids fractionators, the propylene fractionators, the butane isomerization units, the octane enhancement facility, north and east facilities and the import/export terminals located on the Houston Ship Channel.”

I have no idea what fractionators are, especially when used in such a context. I suppose they make fractions out of the chemicals. I always liked 3/4. My favorite was 4/17 of a Haiku, from the Richard Brautigan piece “Red Lip.”

Hopefully, the person unaccounted for was just off somewhere away from the explosion and was not harmed. Just seeing the huge flame, and that is what it looked like — one gigantic flame shooting way the hell up into the sky, I can’t imagine anyone getting close to it much less surviving while in close proximity to the fireball.

Update: I am watching KPRC News 2 in Houston and their crews on the scene show the fire is still burning (5 p.m. CST)