From Juanita Jean:

Arkema Group, one of the world’s largest chemical companies, warned us yesterday that their chemical plant, 30 miles from Houston, was likely to explode this morning because the plant has been without electricity since Sunday. As a precaution, a one and half mile area around the plant was evacuated.

Early this morning the first in what is expected to be several explosions sent plumes of smoke in the air.

Brock Long, administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Thursday that evacuations are based on “plume modeling,” which is used to predict the geographic extent of a hazard area from an explosion.

“By all means, the plume is incredibly dangerous,” Long said of what’s occurring in Crosby.

However ….

Company officials said the smoke is believed to be a “nontoxic irritant,” authorities added.

This morning, the CEO of the company responded on tv — “Toxicity is a relative thing.”

No it is not. Either it’s gonna hurt you or it ain’t. And whether it hurts you or kills you ain’t even relative — it’s one or the other.

Remember when Texas decided it was not going to monitor chemical plants any longer because that was too heavy a burden on free enterprise? So this right here is your Dan Patrick Memorial Toxic Plume.

The Red Cross botched key elements of its mission after Sandy and Isaac, leaving behind a trail of unmet needs and acrimony, according to an investigation by ProPublica and NPR. The charity’s shortcomings were detailed in confidential reports and internal emails, as well as accounts from current and former disaster relief specialists.

What’s more, Red Cross officials at national headquarters in Washington, D.C. compounded the charity’s inability to provide relief by “diverting assets for public relations purposes,” as one internal report puts it. Distribution of relief supplies, the report said, was “politically driven.”

During Isaac, Red Cross supervisors ordered dozens of trucks usually deployed to deliver aid to be driven around nearly empty instead, “just to be seen,” one of the drivers, Jim Dunham, recalls.

“We were sent way down on the Gulf with nothing to give,” Dunham says. The Red Cross’ relief effort was “worse than the storm.”

During Sandy, emergency vehicles were taken away from relief work and assigned to serve as backdrops for press conferences, angering disaster responders on the ground.

With its massive petroleum and chemical industry, Houston, part of the “Chemical
Coast,” presents a huge challenge in a major flooding event