Police: 2 dead after warehouse explosion shakes Houston [UPDATED]

HOUSTON—Two people are confirmed dead after a massive explosion early Jan. 24 at a Houston industrial company, the city’s police chief said.

Authorities don’t believe the explosion was intentional though a criminal investigation is underway, according to Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo.

Acevedo asked residents who live nearby to search their homes and neighbourhoods for any debris—including body parts—and to contact police if they find anything that could aid in the investigation.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

A massive explosion Jan. 24 levelled a warehouse in Houston and damaged nearby buildings and homes, rousing frightened people from their sleep miles away and leaving one worker missing.

The explosion happened about 4:30 a.m. inside a building at Watson Grinding and Manufacturing, which makes valves and provides thermal-spray coatings for equipment in various industries, authorities said. Police Chief Art Acevedo said one person was unaccounted for after the blast, and the fire department said another person was taken to a hospital for treatment.

The building where the explosion happened was reduced to burning rubble and debris, and some of the surrounding buildings suffered heavy damage to parts of their walls and roofs, footage showed.

Danny Wilson, 63, who lives less than a mile from the site, said he was sleeping when his wife woke him up.

“She heard a big noise and the (grandkids) were running out of their rooms,” Wilson said. “She said it was some kind of explosion or somebody was trying to get in.”

Wilson said he first checked inside his home to make sure nobody had broken in and then he went outside and talked to neighbours to find out what was going on and to check for any damage.

“I didn’t notice any broken glass and I looked at the back window and it was shattered big time,” Wilson said.

He said the blast also broke glass on part of his front windows.

“Everybody seems to be OK now. That’s the main thing,” Wilson said.

Mark Brady, who lives near the site, told TV station KPRC that the explosion “knocked us all out of bed.”

It busted out every window in our house. It busted everybody’s garage door in around here ? and closer toward the explosion over here, it busted people’s roofs in and walls in,“ he said

The blast shook other buildings, with reports on Twitter of a boom felt across the city. Fire Chief Samuel Pena said there were no reports of hazardous air quality, based on monitoring done by a hazardous materials team.

A phone number for Watson Grinding was out of service when called by a reporter with The Associated Press on Jan. 24. The family-owned business manufactures valves and provides thermal-spray coatings for equipment used in the chemical, mining, petroleum and aerospace industries, among others, according to its website.

Houston police tweeted that officers were blocking off streets, but no evacuation was ordered. Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said first responders were checking on residents of nearby homes.

Several people told TV station KHOU that the explosion was so loud, they thought a bomb had gone off or that a vehicle had crashed into their homes.

This part of Texas is home to the highest concentration of oil refineries in the nation and has experienced a series of explosions in recent years. Last July, an explosion at an ExxonMobil refinery in Baytown, east of Houston, left more than dozen people with minor injuries and put nearby residents under a shelter-in-place advisory for three hours.

In December, two blasts in the coastal city of Port Neches shattered windows and ripped the doors from nearby homes.