Deer Park, Texas: A fire reignited on Friday at the Houston-area industrial plant where an earlier blaze burned for days and sent plumes of black smoke over much of southeast Texas.
Large clouds of smoke appeared before 4 p.m. on Friday at the Intercontinental Terminals Company facility as a clean-up effort was underway at a tank that had been damaged in the earlier fire extinguished on Wednesday.
A company spokesman said the west side of the tank farm had reignited but did not say what caused the blaze.
The site continues to raise health and environmental concerns.
Among the chemicals in the plant were benzene, which evaporates quickly and can cause drowsiness, dizziness, rapid heartbeat, and headaches, with worse symptoms at higher levels of exposure.
A containment dike on the property breached earlier Friday, causing unknown chemicals and firefighting foam to spill into the nearby Houston Ship Channel and leading the US Coast Guard to close the channel.
The closure stopped traffic on one of the nation's most important commercial waterways, which links refineries between the Port of Houston and the Gulf of Mexico.
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As the fire burned anew, authorities also shut down a major highway bridge over the ship channel.
Authorities had not asked residents in surrounding Deer Park to shelter in place late Friday afternoon. People living near the plant in Deer Park were told Thursday to remain indoors after air monitors detected elevated levels of benzene. The order was lifted later Thursday.
