An explosion at a chemical plant in southeastern Texas early on Wednesday forced the evacuation of residents within half a mile of the site, a spokeswoman for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said.
At least two people were taken to hospitals, but the extent of their injuries was not immediately known, said Crystal Holmes, the spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office.
The blast turned the night sky orange with fire and was felt miles away, according to witnesses and images posted on social media.
The cause of the explosion at the Texas Petroleum Chemical in Port Neches, east of Houston, was not immediately clear. Ms. Holmes said that it would take time before it could be evaluated whether the fire was “a natural or man-made disaster.”
“It looks, just visually, about half of the refinery is on fire,” she said.
Emergency management officials ordered the evacuation. The Texas Petroleum Chemical Group was not immediately available for comment.
The facility, which has more than 175 full-time employees, according to the group’s website, stretches across 218 acres and produces butadiene, a colorless gas, and raffinate, a fuel product. The combined production capacity for the plant is more than 900 million pounds per year, the manufacturer said on its website.
Ms. Holmes said search-and-rescue crews were going door-to-door to surrounding houses, where some residents had reported damage from the blast.
“We’re not quite sure if we have citizens trapped in their houses,” she said.
Jared Abshire, who lives with his family less than a mile away from the chemical plant, said in a Facebook message on Wednesday, “It woke us up, sounded like a train coming through the house.”
Mr. Abshire, 39, a production specialist at Motiva Enterprises, an oil refinery in Port Arthur, said that he and his family had evacuated their home after the explosion at the plant, which is next to a residential area.
“Say some prayers, TPC has had several explosions and is completely on fire,” Mr. Abshire wrote in his Facebook post.
Scorching, glowing orange flames could be seen raging at the plant, according to a video Mr. Abshire shared on Facebook. Multiple videos and images on social media showed large flames reaching into the sky after the explosion was reported in the predawn hours in the Port Neches-Groves area of Texas, which is home to multiple chemical plants.
The Nederland Volunteer Fire Department said in a Facebook post that there was a mandatory evacuation “for everyone within a ½ mile of the TPC plant in Port Neches.” The department added, “This could change and expand to a greater area.”
Mr. Abshire said that though explosions in “this type of industry” have happened before, a blast of this magnitude was rare.
“It has happened,” he said, but “it is not common at all.”
A deadly explosion in 2013 at a fertilizer plant in West, Tex., was powerful enough to be registered as a magnitude 2.1 earthquake, nearly obliterating an entire neighborhood.
Another plant, owned by a French chemicals company, exploded in 2017 in Crosby, about 30 miles northeast of downtown Houston,when the city was ravaged by a tropical depression.
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