The Washington Post and NPR have similar reports that the Arkema Chemical Plant in Crosby, Texas, is likely to explode. It produces chemicals that require refrigeration for safe storage, and the generator that powers the refrigeration has been inundated with six feet of flood water. The management of the plant says there is nothing to do but to wait until it explodes.
I had another article that listed some of what is stored there, but not quantities. I am not clear on whether the material is stored in large tanks or in containers. I’ve seen warehouses mentioned, which suggest containers. If I had more of that information, I could say more about the dangers.
Some of the chemicals, as I recall from the list, are peroxides and others are hydrocarbons. The two will burn together, although the peroxides probably can explode or burn by themselves. There’s really nothing that can be done to neutralize them; removing them would be best, but that’s probably difficult. The plant probably has a red line in their safety manual for evacuation, and it sounds like that red line has been crossed. People have been evacuated within a mile and a half radius. Hopefully that is based on a calculation from the amounts of material at the plant.
Adam L Silverman
What about Galveston National Laboratory?
Ridnik Chrome
This seems to be the philosophy of a lot of people these days.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ridnik Chrome: Your point?
Mike in NC
Texas is famous for shit exploding with awful consequences.
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman:
Oh god.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: I’ve been wondering about that too. The only reports I see on Google are scare pieces from unreliable websites. One would think that such a laboratory on a barrier island would be built to withstand flooding.
Major Major Major Major
Good thing I left Texas today. As principal skinner said about the burlesque house, I was only there to get directions on how to get away from there.
Mike J
@Adam L Silverman: Do you think it would be bad if a level 4 biolab was underwater? Can we send Trump in to check it out? Tell him it will give him superpowers or something.
Cheryl Rofer
Here is the Galveston National Laboratory website. They study human infectious diseases.
Roger Moore
The Post article mentioned organic peroxides. Unless they’re quite small, they’re likely to be more of a fire hazard than an explosion hazard. Of course they’re also likely to have inorganic peroxides as starting materials, so the explosion hazard is still there.
FWIW, this sounds to me like a reasonable business that just got hit by force majeur rather than a fly-by-night operation that had problems because they cut corners like the West, TX fertilizer plant. They had multiple backup generators, and it sounds as if their setup still gave them time to call for an orderly evacuation of the town when every source of power failed.
For people who will inevitably complain that it should have been located in the middle of nowhere so it wouldn’t cause any damage in the event of a catastrophe, that’s a nice plan but it’s impractical. Plants like this need to be located where they can have a workforce and where they can ship their products to people who need them efficiently. Neither is served by being in the middle of nowhere. It’s also good to realize that these things are far more dangerous when they’re being transported, so locating the plant somewhere that requires more transportation actually increases risk.
justawriter
Freedom’s just another word for your shit just got blowed up
*apologies to Bobbie McGee and Janis
Wag
@Mike J:
Or tell that scientists say to stay far away due to the dangers. It might end up like his eclipse viewing incident multiplied 100 fold
Major Major Major Major
@Mike J: ugh, but what if it did?
Mike J
@Roger Moore: It’s not the middle of nowhere, but it ain’t downtown Houston either. Pretty sparsely populated near it.
efgoldman
@Mike in NC:
Texas is famous for refusing to “burden” businesses with “onerous” regulation.
This is a political problem, not an industrial or chemistry problem.
rikyrah
Maddow has done stories about this the past two nights.
Texas changed the law, after a previous plant explosion so that you -the public, can’t find out EXACTLY what chemicals are being stored at the plant, or the quantity.
Because, you know ….pesky regulations???
Omnes Omnibus
@Cheryl Rofer: Are we all going to die? Is anyone going to die?
dm
@Cheryl Rofer: Which says, under “Safety and Security”:
So, there’s that.
rikyrah
@Cheryl Rofer:
Da phuq???
Any word on this place?
Mike J
@Omnes Omnibus: I assure you, we are all going to die.
Cheryl Rofer
@Roger Moore: I agree with your evaluation. Since the chemicals must be refrigerated, I’ve wondered about a pressure explosion, followed by detonations or deflagrations.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike J: I was more concerned about timing.
Major Major Major Major
@Mike J: speak for yourself.
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
Inevitably, yes, sooner or later.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: Any day you leave Texas is a good day.
Cheryl Rofer
@rikyrah: See dm at #18. The difference in Galveston versus Arkema is that the quantities at Galveston are small. Probably all the dangerous material at Galveston could fit in a pickup truck. So if everyone followed the procedures implied by dm’s quote, they should have the bad stuff on high ground by now.
Mike J
@Major Major Major Major: Gonna beat Trump to the biolab?
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: I’ve already had that response. Type faster.
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
Old fingers do what they can, whippersnapper.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cheryl Rofer: I don’t think Donald’s minions have had a chance to fuck up that lab. Give them time, though.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: @MomSense: @Mike J: @rikyrah: @Omnes Omnibus:Yep. The Huffington Post article that seemed to kick off the concerns has been taken down and I found this from The Galveston County Daily News:
http://www.galvnews.com/news/free/article_baae13ce-3890-5ec6-ac7e-736dfd18fda5.html
So a wee bit of good news.
efgoldman
@Mike J:
What if it really would? [da-dah-dumm!]
wjs
According to what I saw on Maddow tonight, nobody has any idea what they have on hand because shut up, that’s why.
Literally. The law in Texas allows them to have all manner of dangerous chemicals on hand and they don’t have to tell anyone what they have and they don’t have to disclose the quantities.
“The Texas law allows companies to withhold specific chemicals by labeling them as proprietary. Operators in Texas have invoked the exemption to shield — at least partially — the identities of more than 170,000 ingredients from when the law took effect in February 2012 through April, an analysis of the disclosure records shows.”
We will soon see just how great of an idea this law truly was when they passed it. Freedom! Jesus saves! The Feds are here to bail us out! Wonder how the Texas secessionist movement is doing these days.
NoraLenderbee
It’s about 25 miles from Houston. It might well have been in the middle of nowhere when it was built.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
Sensible towns usually put stuff like that in an industrial park out by the railroad tracks, not in the middle of a residential area. But this is Texas we’re taking about.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cheryl Rofer: Unfortunately, that tells non-experts fuck-all. I did the 2 week army course about NBC weapons. It is on my DD-214. Please help us out.
Major Major Major Major
@Mike J: or being a robot might be fun.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
When the safe distance is a mile and a half, putting it in the industrial park still won’t protect all the residential areas.
Mike J
@Mnemosyne: Look at it on a map. It’s literally out by the railroad tracks.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Please see my comment at #31. My bad for bringing this up. An article on it appeared at HuffPo. I saw it via Charlie Pierce at Esquire. HuffPo pulled the article after one of the local newspapers fact checked it and determined it was hyperbolic and factually inaccurate. Fortunately the lab is built to withstand a Cat 5 hurricane, they started locking everything down two weeks out to be safe, and they sustained limited to no damage from Harvey. So this, at least, is not a concern.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks.
Gravenstone
@Roger Moore: Depending on which organic peroxides they make/use, I wouldn’t be surprised if they also had quantities of high potency hydrogen peroxide on site.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: You’re welcome. Sorry I got everyone stirred up for nothing. Just glad I didn’t put it on the front page.
#FakeNews! #SAD!
Cheryl Rofer
@Omnes Omnibus: The article Adam found at #31 says pretty much what I expect would take place. And they say they didn’t have much happening anyway.
I haven’t worked with biologists who handle stuff like Ebola, but I have worked with nuclear weapons scientists in the US and elsewhere. They uniformly are fully aware of the dangers of their product and are obsessively concerned with safety. I suspect the Ebola scientists are very much the same. They knew the hurricane was coming and took appropriate precautions.
But I do have to agree with other commenters that yes, we are all going to die. And no, I can’t tell you when.
Mnemosyne
@Mike J:
And a house with a swimming pool just up the street. A whole subdivision on the opposite side of the tracks. Great planning there.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: yeah, I figured that wasn’t actually a danger, but thanks for sharing a source that isn’t me guessing wildly.
Mike J
The real question here is why it isn’t called the Arkemical plant.
trollhattan
My employer at the time lost several employees in the Texas City Refinery explosion. BP and the State of Texas lack of monitoring and enforcement had co-roles in the utterly preventable disaster. BP would later double-down in the Gulf with the Deepwater Horizon disaster, also completely preventable.
They don’t give one shit about human life.
Major Major Major Major
@Mike J: probably the same reason it doesn’t give you superpowers.
TriassicSands
It’s probably not so much a problem of difficulty as danger in removing the chemicals. If they could explode at any time, then sending people in to remove the chemicals could be very dangerous.
My question is Should explosive chemicals that are dependent on refrigeration for safety be stored in an area that could lose power due to flooding? The response is probably It’s a 1,000-year flood and we didn’t expect it to flood and lose power. Fair enough. This time. But will they move the facility after this, since the 1,000-year designation is probably a fiction now that the greatest hoax in history — climate change — is at work? Or will some bean counter pull out the calculator and start subtracting from 1,000 before announcing there is no reason to act; the next flood can’t be expected for 999 years?
Omnes Omnibus
@Cheryl Rofer: Got it. And, yes, I do know that I am mortal. That was kind of unnecessary.*
*Tone is hard to read on the internet.
t
Cheryl Rofer
Looks like the peroxides decompose at higher temperatures.
A couple of pet peeves that telegraph me that the reporters don’t know what they are talking about.
“25 miles” is an approximation, indicated by “about.” It could be 26 or 24 or maybe something else. It has two significant figures. So if you convert it to another unit (kilometers), you should use no more than two significant figures and round off. So “40 kilometers” would be fine.
Most of the articles talk about “volatile” chemicals. This often seems to mean “likely to explode.” There is a common meaning of volatile that is like “unpredictable.” But the chemical meaning is that it evaporates easily. For those of us who use the technical meaning, this is always jarring and, as I say, shows that the reporter doesn’t know elementary chemistry.
Omnes Omnibus
Given the moderation, I am out.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Cheryl Rofer: It’s Wiki but…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston_National_Laboratory#Statistics
Galveston National Laboratory is an eight-story structure that was built using construction standards designed to resist a Category 5 hurricane. In addition to structural design elements, other protective measures included support pilings reaching a depth of 120 feet (37 m) into the earth and the placement of all lab facilities at a height of at least 30 feet (9.1 m) above the 100-year floodplain.[4] The building houses more than 80,000 sq ft (7,400 m2) of laboratory space, of which 12,000 sq ft (1,100 m2) is dedicated to BSL-4 use. Other labs located in the building include BSL-3 facilities which research select & non-select agents in cell cultures, animal and insects.[4] The laboratory became operational in November 2008 and was dedicated by U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.[6] Attached to and functioning as a part of the GNL is the older Keiller Building, which houses additional BSL-2 and BSL-3 laboratories, including an insect BSL-3 lab. Also attached is the Shope BSL-4 lab, a smaller BSL-4 facility built in 2005.
Cheryl Rofer
From that same AP article,
This is a good thing. Looks to me like there shouldn’t be an explosion unless something goes badly wrong. Which, in a flood, it very well could.
Also: methylpropene (like bottled gas, basically) and sulfur dioxide. The SO2 should dissolve in the water if it’s released under water. Nasty for fish and other living things in the vicinity, but not so bad for humans if they stay away.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Cheryl Rofer:
The reporter probably hasn’t taken Chemistry since high school, and maybe not even then.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Looks like I said a bad word…
Mnemosyne
Testing — I keep ending up in moderation in the thread above.
Mnemosyne
Testing again — I think I accidentally changed my email address and that threw me into moderation.
ETA: Okay, that fixed it. What a pain.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Not sure why I’m in moderation.
Omnes Omnibus
Actually, it is too late for any conversation to come from the stupidly moderated comments.
Amir Khalid
@Cheryl Rofer:
A lot of people don’t seem to know the difference, or to respect that there is one, between precision and accuracy. I too find that annoying.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: is it, though?
Elie
@Adam L Silverman:
Sigh. Relief.
patrick II
@Roger Moore:
Maybe, but the person Maddow interviewed tonight said that it is possible to keep chemicals on hand that would dampen or eliminate an explosion but the company chose not to. I think, but am not sure, that the expense was the driver behind that decision.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Precisely.
;)
frosty
@NotMax: That’s an accurate description.
Steeplejack (phone)
Redacted.
cwmoss
@justawriter: and apologies to Billy Sol Hurok and Big Jim McBob, too!
Dulcie
@trollhattan: I do know that when BP arrived in Texas City post explosion, their attorneys came bearing seven figure checks for the injured workers and their families. Not a lot of personal injury lawsuits after that explosion. I don’t blame the families one bit. They were the victims. The state of Texas and BP however…….
They, meaning BP, were told multiple times not to put those trailers where they were located, yet they did it anyway. BP is scum all the way down.
? Martin
This is Texas, darling. They have laws prohibiting safety manuals.
SP
Cumene hydroperoxide.
PaulWartenberg
if the Chinese port explosion a few years ago is anything to go by, distance won’t help against the shockwaves of the explosions.
Just one more canuck
@cwmoss: may the good lord take a liking to you and blow you up real good
Cheryl Rofer
There are explosions.
Another Scott
@Cheryl Rofer: Nah, those are just Some type of release of some unknown irritant chemical, nothing to see here…
They seem to have Baghdad Bob working in the Sheriff’s press office.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Tom
Cheryl – back in 1998, I was working on an environmental remediation project at a DOD site in North Carolina. Due to a series of blunders we had a hydrogen peroxide induced explosion that almost killed several people. I’d be glad to share the details if you would be interested. I’m currently on assignment at a federal installation near Las Cruces but I get home to Los Alamos once or twice a month.
Cheryl Rofer
@Tom: Concentrated hydrogen peroxide is nasty stuff. But there are organic peroxides in toothpaste, to bleach your teeth and make it foam. The organic peroxides are less reactive than hydrogen peroxide, but it looks like what is at Arkema is pretty reactive, and there is much more of it in concentrated form than in toothpaste. It all depends on the particular peroxide and how much of it there is at Arkema, and whether it reacts with the other stuff that is there. Contact me through the form up top.
@Another Scott: Yes, it looks like the Sheriff’s press person can’t be relied on. One can get technical about ignitions, detonations, and deflagrations, but in this case I think it’s wiser to talk about explosions when something goes boom.
@PaulWartenberg: The Chinese port explosion was mainly a building full of ammonium nitrate, with some other stuff to make it interesting. Ammonium nitrate is a particularly powerful explosive. I doubt that the Arkema chemicals are up to that.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
The local news station has more information, sorta:
http://www.khou.com/weather/harvey/explosions-at-arkema-chemical-plant-in-crosby-tx/469003777
“The plant’s chemical inventory includes acetone, benzoyl chloride, chlorodifluromethane, cumene, cumene hydroperpoxide, DI(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, ethybenzene, ethylene glycol, hydrochloric acid, mercury, methyl ethylketone, n-hexane, sodium hydroxide, sodium sulfate, sulfuric acid and butyl alcohol.”
From what little I know of chemistry, a lot of these do not require refrigeration and are fine, as long as they are protected from the fires caused by the organic peroxides. Some things also probably depend on what amounts were being stored.
Gravenstone
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Of this list, only the cumene hydroperoxide and likely the benzoyl chloride would require refrigeration. But many of the others are highly flammable organic solvents, so they could certainly feed any fire that starts if in the same region of the plant.
glory b
@patrick II: That’s right, the fail safe chemical that would be added to prevent an explosion would make the entire container-full unusable (although it wouldn’t explode), according to Rachel Maddow’s quote from operators of other plants.
WaterGirl
@glory b: Greedy bastards.
karensky
@Ridnik Chrome: The deregulation end result.