Houston Officials Vow Public Is Safe as Fire Plume Hovers in Sky
- Specialists in battling chemical fires hired from Louisiana
- Blaze began on Sunday and has belched black smoke since then
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As a towering plume of black smoke billowed a mile above Houston for a third day, local authorities assured residents the inky effusion from a blazing petrochemical site isn’t a threat to public health.
Firefighters suppressed a fraction of the conflagration in tanks engulfed by fire at Intercontinental Terminals Co.’s suburban Houston storage facility, officials said Tuesday. Pollution monitors continued to show that the air is safe to breathe, probably because the intensity of the fire is pushing the thick plume high into the atmosphere, according to Jeff Lindner, a meteorologist with Harris County’s flood control agency.