When Big Spring’s Alon USA oil refinery erupted in a fiery explosion Monday morning, Stacy Barr was two miles away inside a temporary building at Moss Elementary School.
“The ground rumbled and rocked — it rocked like nothing I’ve ever felt before,” said Barr, who was substitute teaching at the school, which was quickly evacuated. “Thank goodness I didn’t have my class yet because it felt like that temporary building was going to come down around me.”
There were frayed nerves all over the West Texas town about four hours west of Fort Worth after residents scrambled out of their homes and workplaces and saw a mushroom cloud of black smoke visible as far as 70 miles away in Sweetwater. The explosion was felt 40 miles away in Colorado City.
“I was four miles away at home, and it felt like a bus hit my house,” said Barr’s husband, Howard County Judge Mark Barr. “I literally thought a car had run right through the middle of the house until I looked outside and saw the black smoke.”
Five people were reported injured in the blast.
Paul Berringer, 37, of Big Spring was in satisfactory condition at University Medical Center in Lubbock, where he was being treated for burns. Three contractors were treated but not hospitalized — one for a concussion and two for possible hearing problems, Alon spokesman Blake Lewis said from the company headquarters in Dallas.
A fifth person was injured when her car was struck by debris on Interstate 20, Big Spring Mayor Russ McEwen told the Odessa American. She was treated and released from a hospital.
The interstate was closed for several hours.
A skeleton crew of just 40 people was at the refinery Monday because of Presidents Day, Alon USA Vice President David Foster told the newspaper. Normally about four times as many people would have been on duty, he said.
Searching for answers
The fire was extinguished by late afternoon, Lewis said, but the refinery is out of operation. The company will continue to ship refined products in storage. Alon has a fuel distribution facility in Southlake, but the Big Spring plant mainly supplies gasoline retailers in West Texas and New Mexico.
The next step is to get into the plant to determine what happened and how to make repairs.
The impact on gasoline markets was uncertain, because financial markets were closed Monday for Presidents Day. But the refinery is a relatively small unit, with a capacity of 70,000 barrels of crude oil a day, and gasoline demand is at a low point for the year.
The refinery, however, does not have a clean regulatory history. It has been issued a number of violations in the past five years.
In February 2005, the site was issued a formal notice of violation for an air-quality violation, and it paid a $13,600 fine, according to the EPA’s Enforcement & Compliance History online database. It was also issued three letters of violation in 2006, and one in March 2007, for water-quality violations, though no fines have been issued. No details were available online.
The refinery is listed as being in violation since April 2005 with the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, a program designed to manage hazardous waste.
The explosion also rattled the Sid Richardson Carbon and Energy Co. facility, which is operated by Fort Worth’s Bass family and is less than a mile away. The Richardson plant gets low-grade diesel oil from the Alon refinery and burns it to produce carbon black, which is used to strengthen rubber tires.
A spokesman for the Basses said Monday that the plant suffered no damage other than a few dislodged ceiling tiles, but traffic in and out of the plant was disrupted. The spokesman said the facility was still producing carbon black and will have to evaluate its options for future supplies.
Alon USA is owned by Alon Israeli Oil Co. It acquired the Big Spring refinery, the Southlake facility and 1,700 gas stations from Fina in 2000.
‘The walls were shaking’
Michelle Bustamante, whose father, Joe, works at the plant, first thought it was a terrorist attack.
“I told my mom I thought they were bombing us over here,” she said. “I thought that because of everything in Iraq, and it is Presidents Day.”
But her father was off work Monday and quickly drove to check on his daughter’s home, a few miles from the plant.
“The walls were shaking and pictures fell,” she said. “The light fixture on my porch fell and completely broke off.”
James Gilbert, the Texas Department of Transportation’s maintenance supervisor for Howard County, inspected Interstate 20, where the pavement was littered with debris.
“It looked like a tornado had come through, there was so much debris on the roadway, and it looked like a bomb had gone off in the refinery,” Gilbert said. “There were pipes, wood, steel grating — I don’t know where that came from. I was real worried. It was pretty scary driving through there.”
Staff writers Bill Miller and Scott Streater contributed to this report, which includes material from The Associated Press.
Alon USA Big Spring refinery
Daily capacity: 70,000 barrels of crude oil
By the numbers
5: Number of EPA violations the refinery has received in the last five years.
9: Hours that Interstate 20 was closed.
40 miles: Distance that explosion was felt.
70 miles: Distance that smoke from the explosion was visible.
When Big Spring’s Alon USA oil refinery erupted in a fiery explosion Monday morning, Stacy Barr was two miles away inside a temporary building at Moss Elementary School.
“The ground rumbled and rocked — it rocked like nothing I’ve ever felt before,” said Barr, who was substitute teaching at the school, which was quickly evacuated. “Thank goodness I didn’t have my class yet because it felt like that temporary building was going to come down around me.”
There were frayed nerves all over the West Texas town about four hours west of Fort Worth after residents scrambled out of their homes and workplaces and saw a mushroom cloud of black smoke visible as far as 70 miles away in Sweetwater. The explosion was felt 40 miles away in Colorado City.
“I was four miles away at home, and it felt like a bus hit my house,” said Barr’s husband, Howard County Judge Mark Barr. “I literally thought a car had run right through the middle of the house until I looked outside and saw the black smoke.”
Five people were reported injured in the blast.
Paul Berringer, 37, of Big Spring was in satisfactory condition at University Medical Center in Lubbock, where he was being treated for burns. Three contractors were treated but not hospitalized — one for a concussion and two for possible hearing problems, Alon spokesman Blake Lewis said from the company headquarters in Dallas.
A fifth person was injured when her car was struck by debris on Interstate 20, Big Spring Mayor Russ McEwen told the Odessa American. She was treated and released from a hospital.
The interstate was closed for several hours.
A skeleton crew of just 40 people was at the refinery Monday because of Presidents Day, Alon USA Vice President David Foster told the newspaper. Normally about four times as many people would have been on duty, he said.
Searching for answers
The fire was extinguished by late afternoon, Lewis said, but the refinery is out of operation. The company will continue to ship refined products in storage. Alon has a fuel distribution facility in Southlake, but the Big Spring plant mainly supplies gasoline retailers in West Texas and New Mexico.
The next step is to get into the plant to determine what happened and how to make repairs.
The impact on gasoline markets was uncertain, because financial markets were closed Monday for Presidents Day. But the refinery is a relatively small unit, with a capacity of 70,000 barrels of crude oil a day, and gasoline demand is at a low point for the year.
The refinery, however, does not have a clean regulatory history. It has been issued a number of violations in the past five years.
In February 2005, the site was issued a formal notice of violation for an air-quality violation, and it paid a $13,600 fine, according to the EPA’s Enforcement & Compliance History online database. It was also issued three letters of violation in 2006, and one in March 2007, for water-quality violations, though no fines have been issued. No details were available online.
The refinery is listed as being in violation since April 2005 with the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, a program designed to manage hazardous waste.
The explosion also rattled the Sid Richardson Carbon and Energy Co. facility, which is operated by Fort Worth’s Bass family and is less than a mile away. The Richardson plant gets low-grade diesel oil from the Alon refinery and burns it to produce carbon black, which is used to strengthen rubber tires.
A spokesman for the Basses said Monday that the plant suffered no damage other than a few dislodged ceiling tiles, but traffic in and out of the plant was disrupted. The spokesman said the facility was still producing carbon black and will have to evaluate its options for future supplies.
Alon USA is owned by Alon Israeli Oil Co. It acquired the Big Spring refinery, the Southlake facility and 1,700 gas stations from Fina in 2000.
‘The walls were shaking’
Michelle Bustamante, whose father, Joe, works at the plant, first thought it was a terrorist attack.
“I told my mom I thought they were bombing us over here,” she said. “I thought that because of everything in Iraq, and it is Presidents Day.”
But her father was off work Monday and quickly drove to check on his daughter’s home, a few miles from the plant.
“The walls were shaking and pictures fell,” she said. “The light fixture on my porch fell and completely broke off.”
James Gilbert, the Texas Department of Transportation’s maintenance supervisor for Howard County, inspected Interstate 20, where the pavement was littered with debris.
“It looked like a tornado had come through, there was so much debris on the roadway, and it looked like a bomb had gone off in the refinery,” Gilbert said. “There were pipes, wood, steel grating — I don’t know where that came from. I was real worried. It was pretty scary driving through there.”
Staff writers Bill Miller and Scott Streater contributed to this report, which includes material from The Associated Press.
Alon USA Big Spring refinery
Daily capacity: 70,000 barrels of crude oil
By the numbers
5: Number of EPA violations the refinery has received in the last five years.
9: Hours that Interstate 20 was closed.
40 miles: Distance that explosion was felt.
70 miles: Distance that smoke from the explosion was visible.
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