A huge explosion tore through a British Petroleum oil refinery in Texas City Wednesday morning, killing at least 15 people and injuring over 100. Here is the exhaustive Chronicle coverage on the blast.
Texas City is a city of 40,000 located on Galveston Bay about 30 miles south of Houston just north of Galveston Island. My 15 year old daughter was on the beach on Galveston with friends when the blast occurred yesterday morning, and she and her friends said that the blast sounded like a thunderclap directly overhead when it occurred. They spent the rest of the morning watching the billowing smoke from the blast cover the sky north of Galveston.
The British Petroleum refinery that blew is one of many in Texas City, which is one of several cities south and east of Houston that contain some of the largest refineries and petrochemical plants in the nation. This particular plant is the third largest in the U.S., sprawling across 1,200 acres. It processes almost 450,000 barrels of crude oil daily and employs almost 2,000 people.
Within minutes of the explosion, Texas City officials issued the “shelter-in-place” warning to Texas City residents, which requires residents to stay inside until authorities could be certain the air was safe. These procedures are commonplace in Texas City, which has endured some of the most remarkable explosions in American history.
Although the 1900 Galveston Hurricane is the worst disaster that the Houston-Galveston area has endured in modern history, the disaster resulting from the Texas City industrial explosions over a two day period in April 1947 is not far behind. During those perilous two days, a fire aboard a ship at the Texas City docks triggered a series of massive explosions in several Texas City plants that killed 576 people and left fires burning in the city for days. In fact, huge explosions are really just a part of life in Texas City. As one former Texas City resident observed to me several years ago after a relatively small blast killed a couple of workers at another plant:

“That one won’t even make the Top Ten list of Texas City explosions.”

Unfortunately, the BP plant explosion of yesterday will.