HOUSTON -- An explosion Friday leveled a warehouse in Houston, leaving at least two people dead, damaging nearby buildings and homes and rousing frightened residents from their sleep miles away, authorities said.
The explosion happened about 4:30 a.m. inside a building at Watson Grinding and Manufacturing, which makes valves and provides thermal-spray coatings for equipment in various industries, authorities said. The building was reduced to burning rubble, and some surrounding buildings suffered heavy damage to their walls and roofs.
Police Chief Art Acevedo confirmed the deaths Friday and said it was likely both people worked for the company. He said a family member of one of the people thought to have died was a Marine currently training at Camp Lejeune, N.C., and called on the Marines to let the man return to Houston.
Authorities don't believe the explosion was intentional, though a criminal investigation is underway, Acevedo said.
"Do a search around your own home and your own neighborhood, even if you're a mile away from this location," Acevedo said. "Look for any debris, any body parts, anything that may be related. If you find anything in your immediate home, in your yard, don't touch it. Just call the Houston Police Department so we can respond."
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Houston Fire Chief Samuel Pena said hazardous-materials crews have secured the valve on a 2,000-gallon tank of propylene that had been leaking. Propylene is a colorless gas used to produce chemicals in plastics, synthetic rubber and gasoline. It is highly flammable and can explode in a fire. People exposed to propylene can become dizzy and light-headed, and the gas can also cause liver damage.
Nearby homes sustained significant damage. Some were knocked off their foundations.
Manny Jawa, a volunteer with the Houston office of the American Red Cross, said his agency had helped about 100 people who went to an evacuation shelter set up about 6 a.m. Friday at a church near the blast site.
Officials said they planned to open an overnight shelter at a different church for residents who had been displaced from their homes and had nowhere else to go.
Miguel Ramirez, 65, tried to get out of his bedroom to see what had happened, but his bedroom door would not open. He removed the pins from the door's hinges to get out.
Ramirez said he found that a large portion of the ceiling in his living room had collapsed onto the floor and sofa. The explosion also shattered the sliding door in his kitchen that leads to his backyard. Bits of glass were strewn all over the kitchen floor and a dining room table. The blast also knocked off tiles from the ceiling in the kitchen.
"The good thing is nobody got hurt," said Ramirez, who lives with his family about 500 feet from the explosion site.
The blast shook other buildings, with reports on Twitter of a boom felt across the city. Pena said there were no reports of hazardous air quality, based on monitoring done by a hazardous materials team.
A phone number for Watson Grinding was out of service when called by a reporter with The Associated Press on Friday morning. The family-owned business manufactures valves and provides thermal-spray coatings for equipment used in the chemical, mining, petroleum and aerospace industries, among others, according to its website.
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About 90,000 people live within 3 miles of the company, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Houston police tweeted that officers were blocking off streets, but no evacuation was ordered. Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said first responders checked on residents of nearby homes.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said on Twitter that there was no hazard in the air "from all indications," but that authorities continued to monitor.
This part of Texas is home to the highest concentration of oil refineries in the nation and has experienced a series of explosions in recent years. Last July, an explosion at an Exxon Mobil refinery in Baytown, east of Houston, left more than a dozen people with minor injuries and put nearby residents under a shelter-in-place advisory for three hours.
In December, two blasts in the coastal city of Port Neches shattered windows and ripped the doors from nearby homes.
Two homeowners are already suing Watson Grinding, accusing the company of negligence and demanding more than $1 million in damages. According to one lawsuit filed by homeowner Sophia Navarro, the blast blew out the windows of her home, with glass strewn inside and out, and fractured the home's walls and foundation.
Information for this article was contributed by Jill Bleed of The Associated Press.
A Section on 01/25/2020