“I went out there and I looked and when I saw the fire, I got so scared. I have never been panicked like that before,” Chandra Thom said.
LA PORTE, Texas — Crews are battling a raging pipeline fire in the Deer Park area.
It’s burning near the Brookglen neighborhood at Spencer Highway near East Boulevard in La Porte. The fire department advised residents and businesses between Luella and Canada to evacuate, the La Porte OEM said.
“There are about 350 homes that are very near the fire point and so there’s an evacuation order in place,” Harris County Commissioner Adrian Garcia said. Heritage Elementary and College Park Elementary were also evacuated, along with a nearby H-E-B and Walmart.
Brookglen resident Chandra Thom said she was getting ready for work when she heard a loud noise.
“I went out there and I looked and when I saw the fire, I got so scared. I have never been panicked like that before,” Thom said. “And then I start screaming and I run. I run through the front door and run down the street.”
She said the heat from the fire was intense.
“It was very hot, it felt like, I don’t know, like a big ball of fire coming close to you, like you’re standing in front of an oven,” Thom told us.
Firefighters are spraying nearby homes to try and protect them. Smoke could be seen coming from some rooftops.
We spoke with a man on East Meadow Drive whose back fence at his home was already charred when he and his family evacuated.
“It’s just devastating to see this in the back of my yard,” Abel told us. “Hopefully, my house stays intact. It’s all materialistic stuff, it can be replaced. The only thing that can’t be replaced is just memories and pets.”
Abel was at work when the fire started but rushed home to help his wife and daughter get their three dogs out. He said a police officer had to break the back door open to help get the pets out. They had to leave a cat and some fish behind.
“Hopefully, the cat gets out,” he said.
Thankfully, no injuries have been reported, Garcia said.
Flames from the pipeline fire ignited a grass fire but firefighters appear to have it under control.
Nearby La Porte ISD schools and San Jacinto College Central Campus were sheltering in place.
Some power poles also caught fire and thousands of customers are without power. CenterPoint says over 4,000 customers are impacted. Emergency responders are helping an assisted living community that doesn’t have power to keep them safe and more than a dozen residents there were evacuated, according to Garcia.
The Jimmy Burke Activity Center on 13th Street in Deer Park is open for anyone who needs a place to go.
So far, no other neighborhoods have been advised to evacuate because the winds are calm and that’s keeping the smoke from spreading.
“The smoke is just going straight up into the air, so from a weather perspective, there’s no wind and there’s also no inversion,” KHOU 11 meteorologist Pat Cavlin explained. “Because the smoke is allowed to go straight up into the atmosphere and not hug the ground, this is not an immediate concern for surrounding neighborhoods, just the immediate area.”
Harris County pollution control is monitoring the air quality.
Hazmat teams are also on the scene.
According to the Harris County Judge’s Office, Deer Park Mayor Jerry Mouton Jr. said the company that owns the pipeline is Energy Transfer and that it is a liquid natural gas line that is burning.
It could take hours to put the fire out and emergency officials said he could even burn through the night.
Spencer Highway is closed in both directions and so are nearby roads. Everyone should avoid the area.
This is a map of where the fire is happening.
