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Old 12-10-2009, 07:51 AM
 
Location: Clear Lake, Houston TX
8,376 posts, read 30,564,242 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EEstudent View Post
This is gotten to be a part of living in Houston, your living next to very large industrial sized refinery's and of course things cant stay perfect all the time. Things like this happen in Houston, just a part of life.

How many bombs have gone off in Sugar Land or the SW side recently? Aside from an absolutely massive explosion way out in Brenham in 1992, I don't remember ever dealing with these things there.

I think this is more a part of life on the eastern parts of town, near the San Jacinto River/ship channel and on the coastline from north of Baytown down to Galveston.
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Old 12-10-2009, 08:17 AM
 
Location: A little suburb of Houston
3,702 posts, read 18,147,677 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tstone View Post
How many bombs have gone off in Sugar Land or the SW side recently? Aside from an absolutely massive explosion way out in Brenham in 1992, I don't remember ever dealing with these things there.

I think this is more a part of life on the eastern parts of town, near the San Jacinto River/ship channel and on the coastline from north of Baytown down to Galveston.
Let's see...a facility on the near SW side exploded about 3 years ago. There was another explosion out toward SL about 2-3 years ago, I remember watching the smoke from Bltwy 8 and 59. Pipelines in different parts of town go up every so often...last ones I recall were in Copperfield and Cypress areas. Definitely not isolated to the east side.

With the exception of the Phillips and ARCO explosions 20 years ago, the chemical incident causing the most amount of casualties in the Houston/Harris County area occurred on the SW freeway at 610. You are probably too young to remember the ammonia tanker that went up there. See: http://www.ircrisk.com/blognet/post/...ton-Texas.aspx and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OR7A5jWmDs

Last edited by Poltracker; 12-10-2009 at 08:31 AM..
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Old 12-10-2009, 08:47 AM
 
Location: Clear Lake, Houston TX
8,376 posts, read 30,564,242 times
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Wow, thanks for the info. My mistake! I guess the eastern side is where I'd look first when I hear about an explosion in the area. The ones to the west aren't as in-your-face, miles & miles & miles of sprawling plants. And yeah, that Galleria-area incident happened just before I was born.
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Old 12-10-2009, 01:05 PM
 
Location: Central Bay Area, CA as of Jan 2010...but still a proud Texan from Houston!
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Wow I clearly remember the day of the ammonia tank explosion. It was horrifying...my mother worked downtown and could not get home for hours. I was 12 years old and so scared for my mom out there trying to get home. That was a serious tragedy indeed! I remember how beautiful the weather was on that day it so strange what things stand out in your memory when you recall something from long ago.
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Old 12-11-2009, 05:46 PM
 
Location: Beautiful Downtown Rancho Cordova, CA
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The Phillips explosion was really bad too.
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Old 12-12-2009, 06:06 AM
 
Location: A little suburb of Houston
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ElectroPlumber View Post
The Phillips explosion was really bad too.
Yep mentioned that. The Phillips explosion killed 23 people, injured a lot more people and did actual damage to homes and businesses in Pasadena. Plate glass windows at my office almost a mile away were blown out. Thankful that it was lunch hour and the secretary who occupied the reception area where the windows were had gone out. The multistory office building at the plant itself was literally blown off its slab foundation by a foot or so. I remeber seeing the iron beams propping it up. Numerous Phillips employees were trapped on the ship channel side of the plant and a volunteer flotilla of tugboats, fireboats, workboats etc. moved the folks across the channel to safety. I believe the final number ferried was about 400. Rumor has it that the investigators actually found that some of the employees who died actually stayed behind trying to relieve the pressure in the unit and prevent or delay the explosion and get their co-workers out.

The Phillips plant had two more less catastrophic explosions but both having fatalities if I recall correctly at the same unit before shutting the unit down entirely. I remember feeling the impact of the second of these at my office, also occured during lunch.


The ARCO explosion in Channelview happened a few months after the big Phillips explosion and killed 16 people.
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Old 12-12-2009, 06:30 AM
 
Location: Houston, TX
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That video made me cringe, although it wasnt overly graphic. Kind of a reminder of how dangerous the stuff we work with can be.
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Old 12-12-2009, 11:26 AM
hsw
 
2,144 posts, read 7,133,086 times
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Obviously riskier to live near industrial stuff or Gulf in a hurricane corridor

But NYC and its mass transit and trophy skyscrapers will always be terror targets

And ~100 people often die in car crashes related to any major snowstorm moving through Chic and NYC corridors

Risks exist everywhere; arguably most are easily anticipated and prevented
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Old 12-12-2009, 09:22 PM
 
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
9,352 posts, read 19,940,576 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Poltracker View Post
Let's see...a facility on the near SW side exploded about 3 years ago. There was another explosion out toward SL about 2-3 years ago, I remember watching the smoke from Bltwy 8 and 59. Pipelines in different parts of town go up every so often...last ones I recall were in Copperfield and Cypress areas. Definitely not isolated to the east side.

With the exception of the Phillips and ARCO explosions 20 years ago, the chemical incident causing the most amount of casualties in the Houston/Harris County area occurred on the SW freeway at 610. You are probably too young to remember the ammonia tanker that went up there. See: IRC's Risk and Safety Blog | 1976 Ammonia Tanker Crash, Houston, Texas and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OR7A5jWmDs

Quote:
Originally Posted by TVC15 View Post
Wow I clearly remember the day of the ammonia tank explosion. It was horrifying...my mother worked downtown and could not get home for hours. I was 12 years old and so scared for my mom out there trying to get home. That was a serious tragedy indeed! I remember how beautiful the weather was on that day it so strange what things stand out in your memory when you recall something from long ago.

i was in high school at marian (not sure what it is now) that day..... just down 610 in bellaire..... remember it clearly........ they didn't evacuate us.... but if our parents called or showed up, we were excused for the day........
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Old 12-13-2009, 07:34 AM
 
Location: Houston, TX
8,891 posts, read 19,872,111 times
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I remember that ammonia tanker explosion well at the 610/59 interchange. I was supposed to have an interview at the Houston Post for a summer job that day and because of an ill family member could not go to that interview. I remember being so mad that my family had asked me to stay home instead of going to the interview that I so desperately wanted to go to (yes ... part of being very young and selfish). That request to stay home saved me from the danger and I never forgot that. People had permanent lung damage after inhaling that -- those on the road (which is probably where I would have been at the time) but even some inside that building. That taught me that things do happen for a reason and me being forced to stay home ... there was a reason for that.
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