PORT ARTHUR, Texas — After almost a week BASF TotalEnergies Petrochemicals in Port Arthur remains shut down following a fire and the collapse of a tower at the refinery on September 5, 2023.
Shelly Vitanza of BASF confirmed to 12News that the entire facility is remaining shut down for now "out of an abundance of caution."
The cause of the fire is under investigation according to a news release from Vitanza
"We are working to resume operations as soon as possible," Vitanza said in the release.
A fire broke out on September 5 around 10:45 a.m. in the pyrolysis gasoline unit at the refinery.
Just over an hour later, at 11:55 a.m., the extractive dissolution tower collapsed. 12News was previously told that a pyrolysis tower had collapsed.
Following the collapse of the tower all employees who were not directly involved in dealing with the fire and tower collapse were evacuated according to Vitanza. The evacuation happened at about 12:20 p.m.
The employees were all accounted for and no one was injured.
The refinery notified the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality of the fire by 1 p.m. according to the agency. Regional staff from the TCEQ then responded to the refinery.
AMF Materials and Services next door also had to evacuate according to the owner Jesse Erwin.
"We tried to get the doors down as quick as possible and get out of there. I told them all, let's take a two to three hour lunch and see what comes of this before we come back and get back in the middle of it," Erwin told 12News.
Erwin and his fellow employees were quick to react once they saw crews nearby rushing to evacuate.
"We saw the smoke up in the air, never heard anything. We got a call from a local company, another company we work with saying they'd seen it fall," said Erwin.
For Erwin, the fire reminded him of the TPC explosion in 2019.
"We're pretty jumpy after TPC. When you see any refinery evacuating, especially one right here on top of us, it's pretty worrisome," said Erwin.
The fire was contained by 1:30 p.m. according to Vitanza.
"We saw a lot of black smoke and I mean, quite a bit of it coming up. It didn't last long. I think maybe 10 minutes at the most. And the smoke was gone but we could see there was fire crews over there working. I guess they got it contained pretty fast, thankfully," Erwin said.
A ladder truck from the Port Arthur Fire Department with a crew of three firefighters responded to the fire at about 11:15 a.m. according to Port Arthur Fire Chief Greg Benson.
The Port Arthur firefighters responded as part of a mutual aid agreement for this type of incident Benson said.
The company is investigating the cause of the fire and subsequent tower collapse.
Fire at BASF TotalEnergies Petrochemicals refinery
"BASF regards protection of health, safety and the environment as our most important responsibility. We care about our employees and we care about our communities. We are committed to operating facilities in a safe and environmentally responsible fashion," according to the news release.
The unit is a joint venture of BASF and Total Energies.
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This is a developing story. We will update with more if and when we receive more confirmed information.