Chemical Disaster at Texas Oil Plant Leaves Two People Dead and Dozens More Injured

SEATTLE - An accident at a Houston-area oil refinery on Oct. 10 left at least two workers dead as a result of a hydrogen sulfide leak. It marks yet another such event in the state of Texas, the entity with the most chemical incidents in the nation.

The leak set off urgent warnings from nearby residents to stay inside their homes before authorities later determined people could go out again. Despite the mitigation of the incident, nearly three dozen people were either transported to hospitals or treated at the scene, according to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez.

Houston is no stranger to these kind of disasters, considering it houses over 40 percent of the country's petrochemical manufacturing capacity.

Researchers from nonprofit Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters, which has been tracking incidents involving hazardous chemicals since January 2021, says there have been at least 894 hazardous chemical incidents in the U.S. as of September 2024, with Texas leading the list with 114 cases.

Last month, Texas experienced two hazardous chemical disasters in Frisco and LaPorte. On Sept. 26, a chemical reaction from a pallet of chemicals caused a three alarms fire at the pool supply company. As a result, 10 first responders were hospitalized after being exposed to chlorine tablets and sodium hypochlorite.

Two weeks prior to that, a driver who apparently suffered a medical seizure died when an SUV crashed into a pipeline near Deer Park, Texas. An estimated 1,000 businesses and homes were evacuated as a result, as natural gas liquids released from the pipeline burned for four days. The massive gas leak left four people injured, including a firefighter.

Almost a month later, residents of Deer Park saw yet another gas leak as the plant, who is operated by Pemex, Mexico's state-owned oil company, caused a shelter-in-place order which was later lifted after air monitoring showed no risk to the surrounding community, according to Deer Park Mayor Jerry Mouton.

In a statement, Pemex said that investigations were underway and that operations had been "proactively halted" at two units with the aim of mitigating the impact. Gonzalez said that the gas release happened during work on a flange at the Pemex facility, which is part of a cluster of oil refineries and plants in Houston.

Mayor Mouton said that "other than the smell," authorities did not have any verifiable air monitoring to support that any hydrogen sulfide or other chemicals got outside of the facility.

With Pemex accounting for the latest chemical disaster in the state, Texas has now seen 28 such incidents so far this year. But although the high number of chemical disasters taking place, this was the first one this year that included fatalities, matching last year's total of two deaths due to chemical disasters.