Explosion reported at Texas City refinery

[roadmaster]

TEXAS CITY, Texas (KTRK) --
We are following breaking news from Texas City where an explosion and resulting fire were reported at a Valero refinery.


Texas City officials said local fire departments are heading to the refinery to help put out the fire.

They said on the alert massive fire

http://abc13.com/watch-live-explosio...inery/3367419/

[HawkTheSlayer]

Oh my , i was supposed to be headed there next month for shutdown. Looks like there will be months of work now.
I pray no one was injured. Fire is bad, but exposion in/at cat crackers is usually high mortality.

[HawkTheSlayer]

Hard to tell from the pic but that looks like a heater. Shouldn't be any casualties.
There are miles of tubing(usually 6 inch) inside, through which process product is superheated.

[HawkTheSlayer]

The flaring on the side is standard proceedure in cases of emergency. Product is rerouted there to be flared off.

[HawkTheSlayer]

Here is another pic. They are rather blurry but it looks like a stack of exchangers with the top one in failure.

http://www.nbc4i.com/news/u-s-world/...as/1130442051#

[HawkTheSlayer]

Site view of actual fire. 13 minutes.





Fire originates in a tower. Kudos on the camera work.