Two petrochemical fires in one day, burning for hours and leading to evacuations and power outages โ that was the reality for southwest ถถา๕h residents a little over a week ago.
In the coastal town of Cameron, an LNG tank, which fueled a generator that has provided power to the townโs residents since regular transmission lines were destroyed by Hurricane Laura in 2020, caught on fire and burned for several hours.
Only a few hours after that fire started on June 3, just outside of the city limits of Lake Charles, lightning struck a tank at a local refinery, causing it to combust and burn until the early morning hours, and sending a plume of thick black smoke thousands of feet into the air.
Both fires highlighted ongoing challenges in the regionโs recovery process. On southwest Louisianโs coast, thousands of households are still powered by generators, after the local power delivery system was taken out by Laura way back in August 2020. In Lake Charles and the surrounding parish, emergency alert systems remain spotty, with a majority of emergency sirens out of commission, also due to storm damage.
Lake Charles resident Laura Martin said she heard the sirens at a distance on Saturday afternoon. Then, โI looked out the window and there was black smoke,โ said Martin, who lives three miles from the refinery where a fire broke out that day.
After that, Martin said she was unsure what to do. She received a text message saying there was a crude oil tank on fire and that the Lake Charles Fire Department was โrequesting a shelter in place.โ For more information, a website linked in the text message stated, she should follow local media and await future messages.
The material that burned, it later turned out, was not crude oil, but naphtha, a refined fuel.
โIt was very difficult to find any valid information,โ said Martin, who tried to cobble together information on what happened and what she should do from social media. โWe had no idea whatโs going on.โ
Although it didnโt seem like it to the many residents who took to social media to express their frustration about the lack of information from official sources, those living within the evacuation and shelter-in-place radius of Saturdayโs refinery fire were comparably lucky.
Out of the 35 emergency sirens in Calcasieu Parish, only 11 are currently operational โ the four sirens located closest to the refinery are part of that small group, according to the Calcasieu Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (OHSEP).
That system came under scrutiny recently when no sirens alerted residents to a chlorine leak at the BioLab facility in Westlake โ none in the area were functional.
There was no siren alerting residents to a chlorine leak at KIK Consumer Products' BioLab Division in Westlake on March 22, 3023, because emergency sirens in the area are still out of commission due to damage from Hurricane Laura in 2020.
Staff photo by Alena Maschke
The implementation of a Community Awareness and Emergency Response (CAER) program, which included the installation of sirens, started in 1986. The Lake Charles area was one of many industrial hotspots to implement such a program following a toxic gas leak in Bhopal, India, that killed over 3,000 people.
Since then, there were several information campaigns, partially funded by industry, to educate residents on best practices during an emergency, like how to properly shelter-in-place, but no such campaigns have been run recently, said OHSEP Director Dick Gremilion.
Gremilion said he expects that to change after this monthโs incident, pointing toward the next meeting of the local emergency planning committee scheduled for later this month. โAfter this event, Iโm sure thereโs going to be some discussion about it.โ
As for the sirens, Gremilion said it will take at least another six to nine months to repair and replace those taken out of commission by Laura. An engineering firm is currently conducting site reviews and the procurement of material is still outstanding.
Down in Cameron, residents were equally confused. Philip โRoosterโ Dyson, a shrimper, fisherman and Cameron resident, said he received a call from his cousin, a volunteer firefighter, telling him there was an evacuation order in place.
Dyson said he tried to leave, but sheriffโs deputies were blocking the road to the east. The ferry, which traverses the Calcasieu Ship Channel on the west side of town, was out of operation for three hours following the fire. While the ferry has its own power source, the east bank landing runs on electrical power, which was out as a result of the fire.
With nowhere to go and the town out of power, Dyson and his four children wound up spending the night on the familyโs shrimp boat. โWe were all stuck like that,โ he said.
According to Fire Chief Tim Dupont, the road to the east was closed to prevent residents from driving by the site of the fire, which was located next to the road. The town of Cameron itself was located outside of the one-mile evacuation radius, according to Dupont. โThey were fine over there,โhe said.
But Dyson said he was concerned about the potential health impacts from the smoke that emerged from the burning LNG tank, and sheriffโs deputiesโ responses didnโt do much to reassure him.
Philip "Rooster" Dyson in the steering cabin of his boat, where he and his family spent the night after a fire at a power substation took out the power supply in Cameron and parts of the area were placed under an evacuation order.
Staff photo by Alena Maschke
โThey couldnโt even guarantee that we would be fine,โ Dyson said of his interaction with deputies during the evacuation. โThey said we โshouldโ be fine, but thatโs not that good of odds.โ The Cameron Parish Sheriffโs Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Much of Cameron Parish, including the town of Cameron, is serviced by Jefferson Davis Electric Co-op, which provides power to rural communities across five parishes in southwest ถถา๕h.
Households and industry along the coast have been relying on power supplied by substations running on LNG-fueled generators since Laura, and likely will be until a massive system overhaul, meant to make the grid more resilient towards hurricanes, is completed. JDEC General Manager Michael Heinen said that project is expected to be completed in June 2025.
โIt sounds like a long time and, yes, we will be on these generators for that time,โ Heinen said. But, he pointed out, the multi-million-dollar project will be much better positioned to withstand severe storms and ensure that power can quickly be restored after a disaster, avoiding temporary solutions like the one currently in place in Cameron Parish.
Providing power along the coast comes with unique challenges, Heinen said. โThings corrode faster than most places, so equipment failure can happen,โ he noted. But, Heinen was quick to point out, this has been the first incident of its kind since the generators were first put into service in 2020.
The company met with its contractor, Aggreko, which operates the substation, following Saturdayโs incident and will be implementing additional equipment checks, including infrared heat checks to identify potential pressure points in the system, according to Heinen.
Cameron Parish Police Juror Scott Trahan said that, with the exception of Saturdayโs incident, the temporary system has been reliable and that the investment in stronger, more storm-resilient infrastructure will be worth it once the next storm hits.
โItโs not if, itโs when itโs going to happen again. We have to be prepared,โ Trahan said. โWeโre going to have a first-class electrical grid once itโs all said and done,โ he added. โWe just have to be patient.โ