{"id":1435,"date":"2011-11-10T08:51:32","date_gmt":"2011-11-10T14:51:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=1435"},"modified":"2011-11-11T16:31:59","modified_gmt":"2011-11-11T22:31:59","slug":"for-residents-of-refinery-row-a-life-of-fire-smoke-and-sickness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2011\/11\/10\/for-residents-of-refinery-row-a-life-of-fire-smoke-and-sickness\/","title":{"rendered":"On Refinery Row, a Life of Fires, Smoke and Sickness"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Billy Placker’s Front Yard in Refinery Row\/Photo by Teresa Vieira for KUT News<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

What do you see when you look out your window at night? If you live in Billy Placker\u2019s neighborhood, it could very well be a giant ball of fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what we deal with here a while back,” the former refinery worker says. “My grandson run in the house, he said, Grandpa! Grandpa! The refinery\u2019s fixing to blow up. We run outside, and the refinery back around the corner from us over here, both their flares were going insane.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

You might have seen a flare before, maybe while driving along the highway. It\u2019s the fire on top of stacks at refineries. When things are going according to plan, the flame is small. But here on refinery row, a ten mile stretch of plants, refineries \u00a0and homes in Corpus Christi, things don\u2019t always go according to plan.<\/p>\n

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Billy Placker Shows a Photo of a Flare\/Teresa Vieria for KUT News<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWe jump in the truck, I call 911, and I see a fire coming from the middle of the plant a hundred feet high. I said, it looks like it\u2019s about to explode,\u201d Placker recalls.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything happened the way it was meant to,\u201d assures Bill Day, spokesman for Valero Energy Corporation<\/a>. He says flaring events are rare, and declining in frequency. The fire Billy Placker witnessed was a safety measure, a way of releasing gas during a power outage.\u00a0\u201cIt is pretty bright, when it happens, especially at night, because of the combustion,\u201d Day says. \u201cNo external impacts to the community were known, as far as I was told.\u201d<\/p>\n

That community is Dona Park<\/a>, a small neighborhood of about three hundred homes, literally surrounded by oil refineries, many of them less than a mile away.<\/p>\n

Every day up to seven hundred and eighty thousand barrels of crude oil are refined here. But with all of that refining comes flaring, when chemicals are burned off into the sky. And residents here say it\u2019s making them sick.<\/p>\n

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