Page 7 - AT

A7
U.S. NEWS Friday 29 November 2019

$ 10

3 hurt at Texas chemical plant

hit by 2 massive explosions

PORT NECHES, Texas (AP) Troy Monk, TPC's director of official, to order a manda-
— Two massive explosions health, safety and security. tory evacuation of Port
13 hours apart tore through About 30 employees work- Neches and neighboring
a Texas chemical plant ing at the plant at the time Groves, Nederland and
Wednesday, and one left of the explosion were all part of Port Arthur. Water
three workers injured. accounted for, according cannons were trained on
The blasts blew out win- to TPC. surrounding plant works
dows and doors of nearby Jefferson County Judge and tanks to keep them Smoke and fire are visible from the TPC Group Port Neches Op-
erations explosion on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2019, in Port Nech-
homes and prompted a Jeff Branick, the top county cool and avoid further ex- es, Texas.
mandatory evacuation of official, told Beaumont TV plosions. Associated Press
a 4-mile (7-kilometer) ra- station KFDM that it's a mir- At a Wednesday night
dius from the plant in Port acle no one died. He said news conference, Branick protect the environment," mostly related to shattered
Neches in Southeast Texas, one worker suffered burns said a loss of power at the Monk said at a news con- glass. He said state environ-
about 80 miles (129 kilome- and the others had a bro- plant prevented any in- ference. mental officials were moni-
ters) east of Houston. Offi- ken wrist and a broken leg. vestigation into the cause Firefighters have not been toring air quality but that no
cials say they have no esti- Monk said the blast oc- of the explosions or how able to fully assess the dam- elevated chemical levels
mate for how long the fire curred in an area of the much damage was done age at the plant, he said. had been detected.
will burn. plant that makes butadi- to the facility. Likewise, he Branick, who lives near the Texas has seen multiple
The initial explosion at the ene, a chemical used to said there was no estimate plant, said at the news petrochemical industry
TPC Group plant, which make synthetic rubber and yet for the amount of dam- conference that he was blazes this year, including a
makes chemical and pe- other products. He said the age to the surrounding awakened at his home by March fire that burned for
troleum-based products, plant has 175 full-time em- neighborhoods. the initial blast, which blew days near Houston and an-
occurred around 1 a.m. ployees and 50 contract Monk said TPC would form in his front and back doors, other that killed a worker at
It sent a large plume of workers. an investigation team to "damaging them pretty sig- a plant in nearby Crosby.
smoke stretching for miles The second blast ripped determine what led to the nificantly." In the March fire, prosecu-
and started a fire. through the plant about explosions. Jefferson County Emer- tors filed five water pollution
The three workers hurt dur- 2 p.m., sending a steel re- "We're staying focused on gency Management coor- charges against the com-
ing the blast —two TPC actor tower rocketing high the safety of our emergen- dinator Mike White told the pany that owns the petro-
employees and a contrac- into the air. That prompted cy response personnel folks Beaumont Enterprise that chemical storage facility
tor — were treated at hos- Jefferson County Judge in and around in the com- five residents were being after chemicals flowed into
pitals and released, said Jeff Branick, the top county munity as well as trying to treated for minor injuries, a nearby waterway.q

Video app TikTok unblocks teen who posted on China's Muslims

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — the site of content not in line
Chinese-owned video app with the Chinese govern-
TikTok says it has unblocked ment. The U.S. government
a U.S. teenager and re- has reportedly launched
stored her viral video con- a national-security review
demning China's treatment of the site. The 40-second
of its Muslim minority. video, which news reports
The video was removed identified as the work of
for 50 minutes Wednesday 17-year-old Feroza Aziz of
due to a "human modera- New Jersey, starts off as an
tion error," according to a innocuous tutorial on how
statement from Eric Han, to get long eyelashes.
an American who heads It then segues into an ap-
TikTok's U.S. content-mod- peal for viewers to inform
eration team. The site's themselves of plight of the
guidelines don't preclude Muslim minority in China.
the video's content, Han "This is another Holocaust,
said. TikTok is popular with yet no one is talking about
millions of U.S. teens and it," Aziz says. China is esti-
young adults but several mated to have detained
U.S. senators have raised up to 1 million minority Mus-
concerns about data col- lims Uighurs in prisonlike de-
lection and censorship on tention centers. q