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Jul 29, 2023

Still no details from Dow, LDEQ on explosion

Dow Chemical’s industrial complex in Plaquemine, Louisiana., three days after a fire and multiple explosions erupted at the plant on July 14, 2023. (Wes Muller/Louisiana Illuminator) PLAQUEMINE, La. —

Dow Chemical’s industrial complex in Plaquemine, Louisiana., three days after a fire and multiple explosions erupted at the plant on July 14, 2023. (Wes Muller/Louisiana Illuminator)

PLAQUEMINE, La. — Three days after multiple explosions rocked the Dow Chemical plant in Iberville Parish, state officials and the company have remained silent as to the cause and nature of the incident while some neighboring residents report having felt ill over the weekend.

It was about 9:30 p.m. Friday when a fire broke out and several explosions erupted at the facility’s glycol unit. Video footage captured by passersby and surveillance cameras showed a large mushroom cloud and fireball illuminating the night sky.

Nearby residents received emergency alerts when Iberville Parish officials issued a shelter-in-place order for those within a half-mile radius of the plant. The order instructed the public to stay indoors and turn off all air conditioners and fans. Authorities shut down the roads surrounding the plant, including Louisiana Highway 1 and River Road.

Preston Dupuy, who lives in that vicinity, said he felt a shockwave from the explosion while at his home.

“I felt it sitting on my back porch,” Dupuy said in an interview Monday.

Here’s a look at last night’s Dow Chemical Plaquemine explosion from a home surveillance camera in Addis.

Our team reached back out to Dow this morning to see whether there are still no injuries or hazardous chemicals detected in the air. https://t.co/yYNuAvzjKI @WAFB pic.twitter.com/HEAedQwZGb

— lizkohTV (@lizkohTV) July 15, 2023

On Saturday, the morning after the explosion, parish officials lifted the shelter-in-place order at 3:42 a.m. and reopened Highway 1 at 8:45 a.m., though Dow’s emergency crews continued to battle fires well into Sunday morning.

Dow’s glycol unit makes ethylene oxide, which is used to make other chemicals including antifreeze and pesticides. The flammable compound is also a carcinogen and can damage human DNA, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Dow reported its on-site air monitoring had not detected any hazardous materials in the air, according to the company’s Facebook page.

Despite this, some residents reported feeling ill over the weekend and attribute it to the explosion.

Amir Elshawarbi, who lives just north of the facility and works at Kyle’s Express convenience store in Addis, said he began feeling weak and short of breath while at work on Saturday.

“I came to work [for] two or three hours, and I [had to] go lay down because I don’t feel good,” Elshawarbi said.

His coworker, Muhammad Hamed, who lives in a neighborhood just across from the south end of the facility, said he felt as if he was inhaling some kind of irritant.

“You can feel it right here,” Hamed said, rubbing his throat. “Also, in the chest. It felt almost like mucus.”

The Addis corner store is usually bustling with workers on their way to and from Dow’s industrial complex, but it was abnormally quiet on Monday. Hamed suspected many of their usual customers hadn’t yet returned to work.

Bill would require industrial plants to install public air monitoring systems

Dupuy said he once worked at the Dow facility as a pipefitter. The incident isn’t all that surprising to him based on the lax maintenance he described during his time there.

The explosion and fire come just over a year after a large chlorine leak at Olin Chemical inside Dow’s industrial complex. The chlorine vaporized and threatened nearby homes on April 18, 2022.

Within about three hours of that incident, plant operators said residents no longer needed to shelter in place and gave statements that conflicted with reports from parish officials and first responders. Several dozen people later showed up at area hospitals with symptoms they blamed on the chlorine leak.

Dow hasn’t said how Friday’s fire began or what chemicals were involved, and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality has so far only repeated the company’s talking points.

LDEQ spokesperson Gregory Langley referred all press inquiries to Dow’s corporate spokesperson, Stacey Gautreau, who didn’t respond to a request for comment Monday.

The Louisiana Bucket Brigade’s Anne Rolfes slammed the company and state government in a press release Monday, saying Dow failed to mention it was only monitoring certain deadly chemicals and not air quality in nearby neighborhoods. At most petrochemical facilities, air monitoring typically ends at the facility’s perimeter.

“In the aftermath of the explosion, the facility was not monitoring at levels that threaten health in the short or long term and was not monitoring to determine the impact on neighbors,” Rolfes said. “The claim that there were ‘no readings’ is a manipulative distortion of air monitoring results, one long practiced by industry in Louisiana.”

She went on to accuse LDEQ of “parroting” Dow’s claims and failing to hold the company accountable. She also criticized Gov. John Bel Edwards as well as Louisiana Congressmen Troy Carter and Garret Graves, whose districts span the petrochemical corridor along the Mississippi River, for ignoring dangers the industry poses.

Correction: Iberville Parish officials lifted the shelter-in-place order at 3:42 a.m. on July 15 and reopened roads at 8:45 a.m. that day. A previous version of this article mistakenly said both actions occurred at 8:45 a.m.

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by Wesley Muller, Louisiana Illuminator July 18, 2023

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Wes Muller traces his journalism roots back to 1997 when, at age 13, he built and launched a hyper-local news website for his New Orleans neighborhood. In the years since then, he has freelanced for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans and worked on staff at the Sun Herald in Biloxi, WAFB-9News CBS in Baton Rouge, and the Enterprise-Journal in McComb, Mississippi.