Mar. 17—The Intercontinental Terminals Co. fire that broke out March 17, 2019, did not just lead to a massive black plume of smoke lingering for days over east Harris County, before spreading 20 miles to downtown Houston and other parts of the city.
It also led to Harris County officials rethinking their emergency notification systems, after hearing from deeply concerned residents who said they hadn't received timely information about what was happening at the chemical plant near their homes.
Five years later, they have results to show for their efforts, but staying informed during an incident can still be a complicated challenge for residents.
The fire at the ITC Deer Park facility was the first test for the new Harris County Commissioners Court. County Judge Lina Hidalgo and Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia, who represents east Harris County, had taken office less than three months earlier, flipping the court to a Democratic majority. They were quickly thrust into the complexities of a chemical fire — a not uncommon occurrence in east Harris County, where the economy is anchored by an expansive petrochemical industry.
In recent years, the Houston Ship Channel area has experienced more than half a dozen incidents, among them an explosion at a Kuraray America EVAL facility in Pasadena in May 2018, a fire at an Exxon Mobil Baytown plant in July 2019, a chemical leak at a Dow Chemical plant in Deer Park in July 2021 and a fire at a Kinder Morgan facility in Pasadena in July 2023.
The ITC incident was, however, uncommon in its severity. It took three days for firefighters to extinguish the blaze as it spread from a tank holding the toxic chemical naphtha to a total of 11 tanks, some of them holding gasoline blend stocks and products containing the cancer-causing chemical benzene. The fire produced more than 21 million gallons of potentially hazardous wastewater.
Kristen Lee, the senior director of legislative affairs in Garcia's office, experienced the incident as both a resident living near the facility and a newly-hired member of the Precinct 2 team. On the Sunday morning of the fire, her first notification about the incident came first hand when she saw the smoke on her way to church.
"The size of the plume, I just felt very uneasy," Lee said.
As the day unfolded, there were signs that the fire was serious. But Lee also recognized there were many reasons why she wasn't getting information as quickly as she wanted.
There's nothing simple or straightforward about emergency communications during a chemical incident, she said. East Harris County is made up of numerous cities — including La Porte, Deer Park and Pasadena — each with their own emergency management team and communication system. Plus, getting the information right doesn't happen immediately.
"It's very hard to do," she said, "to calculate risk in those first hours of an event."
Ultimately, local officials must rely on cooperation from industry leaders in order to have information to share. Sometimes government officials are fighting for the same details as the public, trying to get answers from private companies that treat the information as proprietary.
Despite these challenges, strengthening public alerts during these incidents has been a major priority in the years since the ITC fire, she said.
"It's like teaching industry how to communicate from scratch," Lee said, "because the old way of doing things where they tighten up and don't let any information out just isn't going to work anymore."
Shelter in place
Lee and her husband were at church less than a mile away from the incident when alarms went off, and the pastor told them they were going to shelter in place. Cities including La Porte and Deer Park have outdoor alarm systems that are activated in case of chemical emergencies or severe weather.
They headed to the church's children's area to wait with their kids, where they ate Goldfish crackers and tried to find information about the incident. Because of relatively frequent chemical incidents, this was a familiar exercise for their family.
"We thought we would shelter until enough information was collected for us to be released," Lee said. "But we were never given the all clear. So we just decided to take the risk to go home."
Lee knew to consider the size of the smoke plume and the direction of the wind to evaluate how unhealthy the air quality might be in her neighborhood.
"This time it was inconsistent. The wind was going back and forth," Lee said. "I just couldn't take the ups and downs of it, so we evacuated to Galveston."
Because of the heavy concentration of industry, east Harris County is different from other parts of the Houston area. Living in La Porte, Lee said she gets reminders from her kids' school to sign up for local emergency alerts. And kids' report cards feature the character Wally Wise, who represents the local emergency planning committee and teaches kids about sheltering in place.
La Porte's annual health and safety fair has medical providers in attendance. "But it's mostly the chemical plants and the city's emergency management team encouraging people to sign up for this service and learn more about your industry neighbors. And I'm not touting this as a model, per se, but it's the way we live," Lee said.
Access to information
After the ITC fire, Harris County officials took a hard look at disaster response, hiring a consultant group to identify gaps and determine how they could better gather and provide information. Garcia's office began working on a major, grant-funded resource guide to help residents navigate chemical incidents, which the Harris County Pollution Control Services Department is expected to release soon.
The county spent millions of dollars purchasing new air monitors and hiring additional pollution control staff so it could gather its own community air monitoring data, rather than relying on other entities to provide that information before it could be shared with residents.
Still, Lee said it isn't necessarily the county's job to step in and oversee emergency communications during an incident like the ITC fire.
"To be perfectly frank," Lee said, "there are parts of a chemical emergency that just aren't for the county to take ownership of."
While Lee recommends that people sign up for alerts from the county's Ready Harris app, it's not a one-stop solution. Residents also need to sign up for their city's emergency management team alerts. And the companies themselves have to be held responsible for communicating quickly and effectively as well, she said.
In east Harris County, that means downloading the CAER app, which is managed by the East Harris County Manufacturers Association, a coalition of around 118 plant sites managed by more than 70 companies.
MaryJane Mudd, EHCMA's executive director, said improving communications has been a major priority in the years since the ITC fire. Companies are expected to file information with the CAER app system within 30 minutes of an incident occurring, she said, and the group is working on simplifying that process so a company experiencing a crisis can report faster.
In 2022, EHCMA started leading full-day workshops on public information and crisis communications. Typically, 150 to 200 people from both government and industry attend those events, Mudd said, so they're prepared for a "collaborative effort when something happens."
"A tremendous amount of time, effort and resources have gone into that," Mudd said. "So much of how you communicate during a crisis is the planning."
County first responders have made changes since the ITC fire as well, according to Harris County Fire Marshal Laurie Christiansen.
The department now meets with companies to do pre-planning, so before an incident occurs they already have records of which chemicals are handled at different sites and where they're located.
"We do various things now to build that relationship, so you're not meeting for the first time when something occurs," Christiansen said.
Christiansen grew up in Pasadena, and she remembers waiting on information about chemical incidents, sometimes going to school the next day without knowing what had actually happened.
While she's a fan of social media, Christiansen said it has had an impact on the public during events like the ITC fire.
"The expectation of the public now is that that information is available within seconds," Christiansen said. "The public expects that we know immediately. And we want to make sure they're getting the best information possible."
For Lee, while she can point to plenty of improvements over the past five years, the information communities need during a crisis is still not as accessible as it needs to be.
"We're getting better," Lee said, "but we definitely don't have this down pat."
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