August 22, 2004
By CINDY HORSWELL
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
MOSS BLUFF FIRE EVACUATION
Not yet: People who live within one mile of the fire cannot return to their homes today.
Homebound: Residents outside the one-mile radius, however, are allowed to return home today.
Where to call: Any evacuee leery of returning home can call Duke Energy at 832-746-2047, and a company representative will arrange for them to continue saying in motels.
All but one family out of the hundreds of residents evacuated when a tower of burning natural gas began roaring from an underground storage cavern last week were told they can return home this morning.
Also, emergency management officials said the walls of adjacent salt domes used to store natural gas were no longer at risk of rupturing.
Plans now call for Boots & Coots International Well Control to cap the ignited cavern with a new valve head.
"We are using the best people in the world to deal with this. Some of these firefighters have just come back (from) fighting fires in Iraq," said Clay Kennelly, Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman.
"We are doing all that is possible and as fast as we can do it."
The torch, which once shot as high as 1,000 feet, had diminished to 300 feet by Saturday, authorities said.
Tom O'Connor, president of Duke Energy Gas Transmission, which owns the caverns, could not say when the natural gas cavern will be capped.
Duke Energy spokeswoman Frances Jeter, however, said the earliest that the Moss Bluff storage site in Liberty County could be cooled down enough to install a cap would be the middle of the week.
With the reduced fire, authorities determined late Saturday that the evacuation area could be reduced from a three-mile radius around the site to one mile, using County Road 129 as a border. Residents are to be allowed to return at 10 a.m. today.
Liberty and Chambers county emergency management authorities said the evacuation will now affect only one family living on County Road 128.
The news came as a relief to some of the more than 360 residents who were forced to leave their homes and belongings when the fire erupted and whose patience was wearing thin as they waited word on when they could return home.
"I can't get anybody to let me back there," said one evacuee, Anita Hampton.
She said that she hadn't been able to take her thyroid medication for three days and that her children need their school clothes and books.
But other evacuees weren't eager to go home.
"We were there (Saturday) and the flame was still shooting above the trees. We still don't think it's safe, and we don't think it's right," said Tony Thomas, who lives about two miles from the fire site.
Brenda Ogle, also of Moss Bluff, said the flame was still making a loud rumbling sound Saturday.
"If you were there at 10 o'clock (Saturday morning), you would not want to go back until it was completely out," she said.
Ogle said a Duke official said her hotel bill will not be paid after Saturday because her home is outside the one-mile evacuation radius.
Duke spokeswoman Gretchen Krueger, however, said, "People who don't feel comfortable going home can continue to stay at the hotels at our expense."
One holdback was determining whether the fire would burn itself out. The burning plume had not burned itself down Saturday as Duke Energy Inc. had expected.
"There were expectations that it would have been reduced, would have burned off. But that is hard to calculate," Jeter said.
Past fires include one at a salt dome storage facility in Mont Belvieu that burned for 35 days and another at a facility outside Kilgore that burned for three months.
Salt domes are underground geological formations of solid salt in which companies wash out giant caverns to store petrochemicals.
The ignited cavern in Moss Bluff is large enough to hold the tallest skyscraper in Houston.
Texas Railroad Commissioner Charles Matthews had expressed concern Friday about maintaining pressure inside the ignited cavern in order to protect two adjacent caverns from rupturing.
If an ignited cavern is emptied, the salt walls between the caverns might become compromised, authorities said.
Saturday, the pressure inside the ignited cavern had dropped from 1,800 pounds per square inch to about 800 pounds per square inch.
Usually, when natural gas is removed from a cavern, it is replaced with saltwater to maintain the pressure.
Kennelly said firefighters do not intend to allow the cavern to empty and lose all its pressure and are making plans to pump in saltwater as soon as possible.
"Right now, we need to re-establish a water supply. We had one, but it burned up," he said.
Initially, firefighters were pumping water from two sinkholes fed by natural springs. The water was being transported through 5-inch fire hoses that snaked across the ground from each hole.
Two miles of hose, however, was incinerated Friday after the second eruption of a stronger stream of gas.
This time, workers are installing pipe instead of hose to transport the water, Kennelly said.
"We have to deliver 4,500 gallons per minute to beat back the heat. This would be equivalent to sucking a swimming pool dry every seven minutes," he said.
He said the scene must be cooled down so firefighters, using protective clothing, can get close enough to put their hands on the 20-inch pipe that leads into the flaming underground cavern.
A special hydraulic tool will be used to cut the ragged end off the pipe, after which a new valve head will be installed, Kennelly said.
Once the cavern is capped and the fire extinguished, workers will quickly make connections to begin pumping in the saltwater.
Meanwhile, Duke Energy workers answered questions and distributed emergency funds to evacuated residents at the Liberty Courthouse annex Saturday.
Food and drinks, provided by the Red Cross and paid for by Duke Energy, were given to families who stood in long lines to get help.
"Our No. 1 concern is to take care of the displaced families," said Gretchen Krueger, a Duke Energy representative.
Krueger said constables were supposed to escort residents to their homes when necessary, but many said they were unable to find anybody to do it.
Still others were concerned about being compensated for damages from the tremors that shook their houses and saltwater that rained down on their properties.
"We are giving out the names of the Duke Energy adjuster to handle these type of claims," said Krueger.
Chronicle reporter Bill Murphy contributed to this report.
cindy.horswell@chron.com
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2751331