Two explosions hit the Arkema SA chemical plant in Crosby, and the company said more could come. A deputy was taken to hospital after inhaling fumes at the plant, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said on Twitter.
County officials had ordered an evacuation on Tuesday of residents within a 1.5-mile radius of the plant.
Flooding shut the nation’s largest oil refinery in Port Arthur in the latest hit to U.S. energy infrastructure that has sent gasoline prices climbing and disrupted global fuel supplies.
Average U.S. retail fuel prices have surged by more than 10 cents per gallon from a week ago, the AAA said on Thursday.
Average retail gasoline prices have risen to $2.449 per gallon nationwide, up 4.5 cents a gallon from a day earlier and 10.1 cents from a week ago, data from the industry group showed.
Moody’s Analytics is estimating the economic cost from Harvey for southeast Texas at $51 billion to $75 billion, ranking it among the costliest storms in U.S. history.
At least $23 billion worth of property has been affected by flooding from Harvey just in parts of Texas’ Harris and Galveston counties, a Reuters analysis of satellite imagery and property data showed.
“The worst is not yet over for southeast Texas, as far as the rain is concerned,” Governor Greg Abbott said on Wednesday.
He warned that floodwaters would linger for up to a week and said the area affected was larger than that hit by 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people in New Orleans, and 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, which killed 132 around New York and New Jersey.
Houston’s metropolitan area, with an economy about as large as Argentina’s, has a population of about 6.5 million, far greater than New Orleans’ at the time of Katrina.
A day after visiting Texas to survey the damage, Trump pledged on Wednesday to stand by the people of Texas and Louisiana.
The storm made it less likely Trump would act on his threat to shut the federal government over funding for a border wall with Mexico, Goldman Sachs economists said. They now estimate that probability at 35 percent, down from 50 percent previously.
Vice President Mike Pence and several Cabinet secretaries will travel to Texas on Thursday to meet residents affected by the storm as well as local and state officials, Pence’s press secretary said.
An army of volunteers has turned out to help the thousands of police, National Guard personnel, Coast Guard flood teams and emergency crews to ferry thousands of people stranded in floodwaters to safety.