Press
Hood County News: Saturday, March 31, 2007
Lightning sparks explosion; no
one hurt
Thick, black smoke billows from burning storage tanks Thursday, March 29, 2007
near Cresson
By Debbie Schneider
Staff Writer
● ...the emergency containment wall around
the tanks “held the fluid exactly the way it was supposed to.
We
didn’t lose anything.” ●
A lightning strike
at a saltwater disposal system near Cresson sent flames and
thick, black smoke billowing high into the sky shortly before 7
Thursday night.
The fire destroyed 10 Saltwater Storage tanks and a small office building at the Texas Transco
Inc.
The facility is an injection disposal site for salt-water
waste from gas wells. No injuries were reported and no trucks
parked at the location were damaged.
The Facility is located about
one mile southeast of Highway 377 off Highway 171 near county
road 1000.
Cresson VFD fire chief Larry
Ingram said that lightning caused an explosion and fire when it
struck one of the fiberglass storage tanks during a heavy
thunderstorm about 6:50 p.m.
"The storage tanks burned
through the night, Ingram said, by 8 a.m. Friday firefighters
were applying foam on occasional flare-ups.
Highway 171 was closed as a
precaution for about two hours after the lightning strike,
Ingram Said. “There was one tank that didn’t burn, and we wanted
to make sure that we weren’t going to have another explosion.”
Bobby Price, owner
of Texas Transco Inc., said the storage tanks contained
saltwater production waste, with some gas and oil mixed in.
“The waste comes in by truck
and is put in the tanks. From the tanks, the saltwater waste is
pumped into a 10,000-feet-deep disposal well,” Price said from
his office in East Texas.
Price said three trucks and
their drivers were at the facility when lightning hit, but no
one was hurt.
“I talked to one of our truck
drivers who was coming down a nearby county road. He said he
saw a big bolt of lightning come down. Then he saw the flash
and the fire.”
Price said the fire destroyed
the storage tanks, but did not reach the waste that was already
injected into the underground disposal well. Texas Transco has
another disposal facility at White Oak near Longview, Price
said.
Ramona Nye, spokeswoman for the
Texas Railroad Commission, said an investigator would visit the
site Friday to look for any pollution issues. Price said the
emergency containment wall around the tanks “held the fluid
exactly the way it was supposed to. We didn’t lose anything.”
Granbury and Godley VFDs assisted Cresson at the fire.
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