LONGVIEW, Texas — An incident at an AEP Southwestern Electric Power Co. substation near the Eastman Chemical Co. plant in Longview is said to be the cause of widespread and increasing power outages in the area, according to the Rusk County Office of Emergency Management, however, SWEPCO has not confirmed the cause.
Meanwhile, flames inside and smoke seen rising from inside the Eastman grounds is from flaring that's part of the shutdown process for the company's plants, which also were impacted by SWEPCO outages, said Mark Bogle, Eastman vice president and general manager of the plant.
By 7 p.m., nearly 81,000 customers were impacted by the outages.
SWEPCO says power will be restored to all East Texas customers Sunday night. The voltage issue has been solved and appliances may be turned on again.
The City of Longview has provided the following information regarding flaring:
- What is flaring?
Flaring is designed to burn processes gases in a safe and controlled manner. Flaring protects equipment from failure (pressure relief) by converting various chemicals through combustion to carbon dioxide, water and NOx (nitrogen oxides).
- Is it dangerous?
Flaring is a controlled process that is designed to safely handle just this type of situation.
- What happened?
The power outage in the area has caused the Longview plant to lose power. They have safely shut down all equipment and are in the processes of stabilizing their plant utility systems.
- When do you expect resume operations?
We have safely shutdown all operations and are working to stabilize utility systems to begin bringing all operations back online.
- Is there any environmental impact as a result of this event?
Eastman is working with the proper regulatory authorities and will provide updates once we know more about the situation.
- Is there any danger to the surrounding community?
They do not believe there is any impact to the community as a result of this event.
- Have environmental authorities been made aware?
Yes, they have contacted the National Response Center (NRC) and Texas Commission of Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to report possible excess emissions of benzene; butadiene, NOx, xylene and toluene as a result of the event at the site.
Read more from CBS19's newspaper partner, the Longview News-Journal.
