Texas city loses drinking water amid Harvey flooding, chemicals kindle at plant

CROSBY, Tex. — The remnants of Hurricane Harvey carried its rage up the Mississippi Delta on Thursday, but not before hammering the Gulf Coast with more penalizing cloudbursts and growing threats that included reports of “pops” and “chemical reactions” at a crippled chemical plant and the collapse of the drinking water system in a Texas city.

In Harvey’s aftermath, authorities confronted crises on several fronts. Houston remained flooded, and police there continued rescuing people from the water while officials searched homes. The battered of Beaumont, Tex., home to more than 118,000 people, woke up without a drinking water system on Thursday — as well as no clear reaction on when it would be restored.

And in Crosby, Tex., about thirty miles northeast of Houston, alarming reports emerged about the danger posed by a chemical plant after the French company operating the facility said explosions were possible. Still, officials suggested differing accounts regarding what had occurred at the Crosby plant, which makes organic peroxides for use in items such as counter tops and pipes.

The plant’s operators, which earlier Thursday reported explosions, later said they believe at least one valve “popped” there, tho’ they noted it was unlikely to know for sure since all employees had left the site.

The Environmental Protection Agency said it had dispatched personnel to the scene, including aircraft to check the smoke cloud as well as other officials, and did not instantaneously detect issues regarding toxic material.

“EPA has emergency response personnel on the scene and the agency is presently reviewing data received from an aircraft that surveyed the scene early this morning,” Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator, said in a statement. “This information indicates that there are no concentrations of concern for toxic materials reported at this time.”

In Photos: Hurricane Harvey

By Thursday afternoon, hours after the reports of “chemical reactions” at the plant, the EPA as well as the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality, along with local fire and emergency management officials, said no hazardous materials show up to have threatened surrounding areas.

They called it “a fire, not a chemical release,” and said they were monitoring smoke and air quality, urging people in the area to avoid the plume of smoke.

Amid the worrying reports in Crosby, other areas ravaged by the storm confronted durable flooding and the misery Harvey left behind. The storm’s fury was also far from over to the east and beyond, as flash flood sees were posted as far away as southern Ohio. The National Weather Service said four inches of rain was expected to soak parts of Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee with up to ten inches possible in some isolated areas in western Tennessee.

Already, federal authorities believe around 100,000 homes were impacted by the storm, Thomas P. Bossert, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, said Thursday at a White House briefing.

President Trump intends to donate $1 million to disaster ease efforts, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said at the same briefing. Sanders did not provide extra details, telling only that Trump desired members of the media to help him select where the money should go.

Asked if Trump, who has a history of overstating his charitable providing, intended to donate the money from his pocket or from his charitable foundation, whichhas promptedcontroversy, Sanders said she did not know.

Vice President Pence traveled to Texas on Thursday, surveying the harm and visiting a church as well as a storm-stricken neighborhood in Rockport, a city near where Harvey made landfall.

About two hundred twenty five miles up the Texas coast, attention in Crosby remained focused on the chemical plant. The facility;s operators, citing local officials, originally said two blasts rocked the facility after it was rendered powerless by floodwaters. “We were notified by the Harris County Emergency Operations Center of two explosions and black smoke coming from the” plant, the company, Arkema, said in its initial statement.

Other accounts soon followed. The Harris County Fire Marshal’s Office reported “a series of chemical reactions” and “intermittent smoke” at the facility; a county official said there weren’t “massive explosions,” and instead referred to the reactions as “pops” followed by fire.

William “Brock” Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, had called the potential for a chemical plume “incredibly dangerous” at a briefing Thursday morning. A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes FEMA, said later Thursday that this view had shifted as more information became available from the EPA. She said the EPA is the lead agency on the situation and that FEMA would defer to them.

Still, the operators Arkema warned that there was still a potential for more danger in Crosby. “A threat of extra explosion remains,” said the statement.

Authorities on Wednesday set up an evacuation zone in a 1.5-mile radius from the plant, tho’ the risks could also could be carried by the winds.

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office said that one deputy was hospitalized after inhaling fumes from the plant, while several others sought medical care as a precaution.

The Crosby plant manufactures organic peroxides, a family of compounds used in everything from pharmaceuticals to construction materials. But the stores must remain cold otherwise it can combust. A multiplicity of federal agencies have warned about the dangers of organic peroxides the Crosby plant produces. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration warns that “contact of organic peroxides with the eyes should be avoided. Some organic peroxides will cause serious injury to the cornea, even after brief contact, or will be corrosive to the skin.” It added that “many organic peroxides also burn intensively.”

An earlier investigate done for the EPA found that organic peroxides are skin and eye irritants and could also cause liver harm.

Water will dilute the chemicals in the plant, but also make them difficult to contain; just as the plant was incapable to keep water from flowing in, it will have trouble controlling water flowing out.

An industry safety guide notes that fire or explosion will release a diversity of chemicals, including carbon dioxide, as well as flammable vapors including methane or acetone. This could accelerate the decomposition of the chemicals. The guide said that water is “usually the agent of choice to fight fire,” tho’ warm water could accelerate the breakdown, and ignition, of the organic peroxides.

David Guillory, who lives in Crosby, said he was skeptical of local authorities warning people near the plant of the danger, because the region has seen intense flooding. He pointed out that people who remain trapped or haven’t yet evacuated because of road closures might not know about the danger.

Local police told him everyone was securely evacuated, but his brother, who lives right on the edge of the 1.5-mile radius, was still home when Guillory called Wednesday. Guillory’s demolished home is closer to the plant.

“It’s in my backyard. Literally,” he said. Guillory is the safety director at another plant and said the safety radius established was also due to the possibility of ammonia inhalation, which is exceptionally dangerous.

“There’s a lot of ammonia there if the radius is a mile and a half,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service said Thursday that while Harvey had caused makeshift suspension of some mail delivery, it was seeking to help people displaced by the storm obtain Social Security and Veterans Administration checks, among others.

Seemingly endless water continued to create other issues in other parts of the state. Police in Houston, still confronting flooded streets, carried out eighteen water rescues overnight Wednesday into Thursday, according to Mayor Sylvester Turner.

“Crisis ebbing but far from over,” Turner tweeted Thursday morning.

Other cities emerged from pummeling rain to find different water problems. In the flooded city of Beaumont, Tex., the water system pumps failed after being swamped by spillover from the engorged Neches Sea. City officials said in a statement that a secondary water source from nearby wells was also lost.

Beaumont had lost its water supply, and in a statement, the city said it was not clear when the water could recede, officials could examine the harm and make repairs.

After Beaumont’s water supply shut down, the CHRISTUS Southeast Texas Health System said it had limited resources and only “essential medical staff caring for patients.” Non-essential, non-medical people were being moved to shelters, the system said in a statement.

To the east — in the town of Orange, Tex. — the water rose so high and so rapid that people had to rush from their homes.

“It was unbelievable,” said Robin Clark, who was ferried, along with her mother and three dogs, out of her home on a volunteer’s boat.

Dozens of rescued residents stood in a pelting rain outside a Market Basket supermarket waiting for what was next.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Keeleigh Amodeo, 15, who was waiting with her sister and mother.

She and others had been told they would be getting on a bus and be taken to a shelter. Where? No one knew. And the buses had failed to showcase yet. Several people noted that another shelter in town had to be evacuated after it was flooded.

Leonard Teal, however, refused to evacuate his flooded home in Orange. The reason: Someone had to keep see over all the pets abandoned by neighbors as they fled the flooding.

“It’s shocking but I’ve got several dogs and cats here,” said Teal, whose was huddled with animals on the 2nd floor of his home. He said he would keep the animals for as long as possible.

Orange and other petite Texas communities were rendered islands as Harvey dumped record amounts of rain. Interstate Ten, which runs close by, was closed to everyone but volunteers in pickup trucks with boats and emergency personnel. Two to three feet of water covered parts of the interstate, while the storm’s death toll had risen to at least thirty seven people and was expected to increase.

Particularly hard-hit was the coastal city of Port Arthur, which local officials said is now largely underwater. Officials estimated that water had entered a third of the city’s buildings.

Max Cup, a bowling alley and arcade, had become a way station for residents fleeing the rising water — a dry place with food, water and donated clothing. Getting to the building required a boat on one side to navigate the deep waters. On the other, all it took was a good pair of boots to wade through ankle-deep water.

Overhead, Coast Guard and military helicopters flew past.

“It’s been chaotic, to say the least,” said Mason Simmons, a mechanical engineering student at Lamar University, standing with a group of friends and family on the curb of Max Cup. They were working as volunteers to help people off boats or out of pickup trucks.

Simmons said he’s seen hundreds of people in the toughly six hours he’d been at the bowling alley. Someone nearby said one boat rescued sixty people.

“I think the most incredible part is it’s been community organized, truly,” he said. “There’s no one person leading anything. We’re just doing what we can.”

Inwards Max Cup, some people slept at the edge of bowling lanes. Luggage and plastic bags packed with clothing competed for space with racks holding bowling nut.

Fast-food restaurants and other eateries were closed around the hotel, leaving evacuees humid, stranded and greedy.

Hotel staff laid out impromptu ingredients of the classic Texas dish of Frito pie: chili, ground beef, Fritos and tortilla chips, canned cheese and jalapeños, sending its guests back to their rooms utter and earning gratitude the next morning. A Hampton Inn employee confirmed Wednesday the chili was served without beans, a faithful rendering of the traditional Texas recipe.

Others still sought supplies elsewhere. The Energy Department said Thursday it would release 500,000 barrels of crude oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help with fuel supplies in storm-ravaged areas. It is the very first emergency release from the reserve since 2012, the Reuters news agency reported.

Even as Harvey moved away from the Gulf, leaving behind as much as fifty two inches of record-breaking rain, forecasters warned of another possible storm that could emerge near Texas early next week.

It hasn’t yet formed, but there are early indications that yet another tropical storm is possible in the western Gulf of Mexico next week. Tho’ rainfall is unlikely to predict in a storm that hasn’t yet developed, any extra rain would be significant for the already-devastated region. Not only would it influence and delay recovery efforts, but it could also lead to extra flooding.

“If this system does develop, it could bring extra rainfall to portions of the Texas and Louisiana coasts,” the National Hurricane Center said on Thursday.

Fresh Orleans officials on Wednesday voiced ease that Harvey spared their city, and they encouraged residents to support for those impacted by the storm in Texas. Mayor Mitch Landrieu noted that Houston welcomed many displaced Fresh Orleanians after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“This week marked the 12th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina,” Landrieu said. “No city was more welcoming for the citizens of Fresh Orleans than the people of Houston. … This is our chance to begin to pay it forward and support those who stood by us.”

Landrieu said that, since Katrina, the city had erected among world’s largest storm surge barriers and most powerful pumping stations. However pumps had failed in days before Harvey made landfall, city officials said ninety three percent of the city’s drainage pumps are now operable.

Officials announced that the two thousand seventeen AdvoCare Texas Kickoff game, which was set to take place in Houston and feature the Louisiana State University and Brigham Youthful University football teams, will instead be held this Saturday at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in Fresh Orleans. Proceeds from tickets, concessions and parking will still go to organizers in Texas, said Stephen Perry, chief executive of Fresh Orleans’s Convention and Visitors Bureau.

“We’re not doing this for us. We’re doing this for Texas,” Perry said.

But the state of Louisiana did not escape Harvey’s deluge totally. Mike Steele, communications director of the Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said three hundred sixty eight evacuees are being sheltered in the Lake Charles area, with that number growing as people are brought in from communities on the Texas-Louisiana border.

Officials opened Burton Coliseum in Lake Charles to treat the overflow of people displaced from their homes, including Texas residents.

State officials said Louisiana has suggested to provide extra shelter space to Texas and is ready to take on as many as Three,400 Texans in Shreveport.

Louisiana residents themselves were suffering from power outages, and Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) said hundreds of roads across the state were flooded.

“Southwest Louisiana, for now, remains the center of gravity as it relates to this storm in Louisiana,” Edwards said during a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “I would again remind people in Louisiana that we have another twenty four hours or so before this storm is out of our state.”

Berman reported from Washington. Todd C. Frankel in Orange, Tex., Lee Powell in Port Arthur, Tex., Ashley Cusick in Fresh Orleans, Leslie Fain in Lake Charles, La., and Brian Murphy, Steven Mufson and Angela Fritz in Washington contributed to this report, which will be updated via the day.

Texas city loses drinking water amid Harvey flooding, chemicals inflame at plant

Texas city loses drinking water amid Harvey flooding, chemicals kindle at plant

CROSBY, Tex. — The remnants of Hurricane Harvey carried its anger up the Mississippi Delta on Thursday, but not before hammering the Gulf Coast with more penalizing cloudbursts and growing threats that included reports of “pops” and “chemical reactions” at a crippled chemical plant and the collapse of the drinking water system in a Texas city.

In Photos: Hurricane Harvey

They called it “a fire, not a chemical release,” and said they were monitoring smoke and air quality, urging people in the area to avoid the plume of smoke.

Amid the worrying reports in Crosby, other areas ravaged by the storm confronted durable flooding and the misery Harvey left behind. The storm’s fury was also far from over to the east and beyond, as flash flood witnesses were posted as far away as southern Ohio. The National Weather Service said four inches of rain was expected to soak parts of Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee with up to ten inches possible in some isolated areas in western Tennessee.

Vice President Pence traveled to Texas on Thursday, surveying the harm and visiting a church as well as a storm-stricken neighborhood in Rockport, a city near where Harvey made landfall.

About two hundred twenty five miles up the Texas coast, attention in Crosby remained focused on the chemical plant. The facility;s operators, citing local officials, primarily said two blasts rocked the facility after it was rendered powerless by floodwaters. “We were notified by the Harris County Emergency Operations Center of two explosions and black smoke coming from the” plant, the company, Arkema, said in its initial statement.

Still, the operators Arkema warned that there was still a potential for more danger in Crosby. “A threat of extra explosion remains,” said the statement.

Authorities on Wednesday set up an evacuation zone in a 1.5-mile radius from the plant, however the risks could also could be carried by the winds.

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office said that one deputy was hospitalized after inhaling fumes from the plant, while several others sought medical care as a precaution.

The Crosby plant manufactures organic peroxides, a family of compounds used in everything from pharmaceuticals to construction materials. But the stores must remain cold otherwise it can combust. A multitude of federal agencies have warned about the dangers of organic peroxides the Crosby plant produces. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration warns that “contact of organic peroxides with the eyes should be avoided. Some organic peroxides will cause serious injury to the cornea, even after brief contact, or will be corrosive to the skin.” It added that “many organic peroxides also burn intensively.”

An earlier probe done for the EPA found that organic peroxides are skin and eye irritants and could also cause liver harm.

An industry safety guide notes that fire or explosion will release a multitude of chemicals, including carbon dioxide, as well as flammable vapors including methane or acetone. This could accelerate the decomposition of the chemicals. The guide said that water is “usually the agent of choice to fight fire,” however warm water could accelerate the breakdown, and ignition, of the organic peroxides.

“There’s a lot of ammonia there if the radius is a mile and a half,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service said Thursday that while Harvey had caused improvised suspension of some mail delivery, it was seeking to help people displaced by the storm obtain Social Security and Veterans Administration checks, among others.

“Crisis ebbing but far from over,” Turner tweeted Thursday morning.

Beaumont had lost its water supply, and in a statement, the city said it was not clear when the water could recede, officials could examine the harm and make repairs.

To the east — in the town of Orange, Tex. — the water rose so high and so prompt that people had to rush from their homes.

“It was unbelievable,” said Robin Clark, who was ferried, along with her mother and three dogs, out of her home on a volunteer’s boat.

Dozens of rescued residents stood in a pelting rain outside a Market Basket supermarket waiting for what was next.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Keeleigh Amodeo, 15, who was waiting with her sister and mother.

She and others had been told they would be getting on a bus and be taken to a shelter. Where? No one knew. And the buses had failed to display yet. Several people noted that another shelter in town had to be evacuated after it was flooded.

Leonard Teal, however, refused to evacuate his flooded home in Orange. The reason: Someone had to keep see over all the pets abandoned by neighbors as they fled the flooding.

“It’s shocking but I’ve got several dogs and cats here,” said Teal, whose was huddled with animals on the 2nd floor of his home. He said he would keep the animals for as long as possible.

Particularly hard-hit was the coastal city of Port Arthur, which local officials said is now largely underwater. Officials estimated that water had entered a third of the city’s buildings.

Overhead, Coast Guard and military helicopters flew past.

Simmons said he’s seen hundreds of people in the toughly six hours he’d been at the bowling alley. Someone nearby said one boat rescued sixty people.

“I think the most incredible part is it’s been community organized, truly,” he said. “There’s no one person leading anything. We’re just doing what we can.”

Inwards Max Cup, some people slept at the edge of bowling lanes. Luggage and plastic bags packed with clothing competed for space with racks holding bowling testicles.

Fast-food restaurants and other eateries were closed around the hotel, leaving evacuees moist, stranded and thirsty.

Even as Harvey moved away from the Gulf, leaving behind as much as fifty two inches of record-breaking rain, forecasters warned of another possible storm that could emerge near Texas early next week.

It hasn’t yet formed, but there are early indications that yet another tropical storm is possible in the western Gulf of Mexico next week. However rainfall is unlikely to predict in a storm that hasn’t yet developed, any extra rain would be significant for the already-devastated region. Not only would it influence and delay recovery efforts, but it could also lead to extra flooding.

“If this system does develop, it could bring extra rainfall to portions of the Texas and Louisiana coasts,” the National Hurricane Center said on Thursday.

Landrieu said that, since Katrina, the city had erected among world’s largest storm surge barriers and most powerful pumping stations. Tho’ pumps had failed in days before Harvey made landfall, city officials said ninety three percent of the city’s drainage pumps are now operable.

“We’re not doing this for us. We’re doing this for Texas,” Perry said.

Officials opened Burton Coliseum in Lake Charles to treat the overflow of people displaced from their homes, including Texas residents.

State officials said Louisiana has suggested to provide extra shelter space to Texas and is ready to take on as many as Three,400 Texans in Shreveport.

Louisiana residents themselves were suffering from power outages, and Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) said hundreds of roads across the state were flooded.

Texas city loses drinking water amid Harvey flooding, chemicals kindle at plant

Texas city loses drinking water amid Harvey flooding, chemicals kindle at plant

Texas city loses drinking water amid Harvey flooding, chemicals kindle at plant

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