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To: Velveeta

It was on MSNBC. They had live footage -- looked like a fairly large fire... BTW, oil is pricing near $48.00 now...


2,958 posted on 08/19/2004 5:53:06 AM PDT by Rutles4Ever
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To: Rutles4Ever; All

***Natural gas blast rocks Houston suburb***

Smoke soared thousands of feet into the air over the pipeline explosion. MOSS BLUFF, Texas — An explosion early Thursday at an underground gas storage facility near Houston has forced dozens of residents to evacuate from the area, say authorities who also closed nearby roads.

Houses within a one-mile radius around the Moss Bluff gas storage facility were ordered evacuated after natural gas exploded at about 4 a.m., authorities said.

"We've got dozens of evacuations," said Cathy Jones, a dispatcher for the Liberty County Sheriff's Department.

She said no injuries had been reported.

Highways near the facility along Farm-to-Market Road 563 at the Liberty-Chambers counties' border were shut down following the explosion. Residents beyond a one-mile radius of the plant were asked to stay in their homes.

One person inside the facility at the time of the blast was able to escape, authorities said. But rescue crews were searching for any other people who may have been inside.

Emergency crews remained on the scene three hours after the blast. A cause of the explosion has not been determined.

According to the Duke Energy Web site, the Moss Bluff facility has a storage capacity of 16 billion cubic feet of natural gas and is linked to 5 major pipelines stretching from New York to far South Texas.

Moss Bluff is about 40 miles northeast of Houston.

The area is dotted with manmade caverns inside salt domes, which are the world's largest storage site for explosive hydrocarbons. One underground gas leak in 1980 forced 72 families from their homes in nearby Mont Belvieu for almost five months.

http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa040819_wz_pipeline.9088a675.html


2,959 posted on 08/19/2004 5:59:28 AM PDT by Velveeta
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