A reported fire at a Houston area refinery has triggered a shelter-in-place alert for nearby residents. The City of Texas City notified residents Sunday morning that because of a blaze being reported at the Marathon Galveston Bay Refinery, they should stay inside their homes.
“A shelter of place has been issued for the City of Texas City from Bay Street to SH-146, due to a reported fire at Marathon,” read an alert posted around 10 a.m. Sunday. “Please remain indoors until conditions improve and an all-clear has been issued.
“Emergency responders are on scene and are closely monitoring the situation, including monitoring the air quality,” continued the notice. “We will post updates immediately as they become available.”
At 10:36 a.m., the city’s Office of Emergency Management updated residents, noting the shelter-in-place remained in effect from 14th Street to 34th Street.
No injuries were reported at the scene, per the OEM, but the presence of a “large plume of smoke” is keeping the shelter-in-place notification on for the time being.
Marathon’s Texas City refinery has a capacity of 631,000 barrels of crude oil per calendar day, according the oil-and-gas company. It also “has 1,055 megawatts of electrical production capacity and can produce 4.3 million pounds of steam per hour.” The Texas City refinery is one of Marathon’s 13 plants across the U.S., and it has the most crude oil capacity of all the Ohio business’ plants.