Fire reignites at chemical plant on Texas shipping channel

HOUSTON — A fire reignited Friday at the Houston-area industrial plant where an earlier blaze burned for days and sent plumes of black smoke over much of southeastern Texas. Plant managers say the blaze was extinguished within about an hour.

Large clouds of smoke appeared before 4 p.m. Friday at the Intercontinental Terminals Company facility as a cleanup effort was under way at a tank that had been damaged in the earlier fire extinguished on Wednesday. Company spokesman Dale Samuelsen said the west side of the tank farm had reignited but did not say what caused the new flare. It was put out by 5 p.m., he said.

The site continues to raise health and environmental concerns. Among the chemicals in the plant were benzene, which evaporates quickly and can cause drowsiness, dizziness, rapid heartbeat, and headaches, with worse symptoms at higher levels of exposure.

A containment dike on the property breached earlier Friday, causing unknown chemicals and firefighting foam to spill into the nearby Houston Ship Channel and leading the U.S. Coast Guard to close the channel. The closure stopped traffic on one of the nation’s most important commercial waterways, which links refineries between the Port of Houston and the Gulf of Mexico.

Crews started Tuesday trying to drain a damaged tank of flammable liquids, including benzene. An estimated 20,000 barrels of liquid were in the tank, which was one of several to catch fire originally. It wasn’t immediately clear if the damaged tank was among those that caught fire Friday.

Samuelsen said the company asked its neighbors, including other industrial sites and the nearby San Jacinto Texas State Historic Site, to shelter in place.

Authorities had not asked residents in surrounding Deer Park to shelter in place late Friday...