More than a dozen workers were injured Thursday afternoon in a flash fire at the Formosa Plastics petrochemical complex in Point Comfort, Texas, the Victoria Advocate reported.
According to a company spokesman, the fire broke out around 1:00 p.m. in one of the plant's polyethylene production units.
The cause of the incident is under investigation.
"When you have an incident of any sort like that, we have to be really careful to make sure it hasn't affected anything else, any of the areas close to it. We are very methodically going through and making sure everything is intact," said Bill Harvey, Formosa communications manager.
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Two of the injured men had to be airlifted to a local medical center due to the extent of their injuries.
The 1,600-acre Point Comfort petrochemical complex site consists of 13 production units with a combined ethylene capacity of 1.5 million mt/year. The company also produces 264,000 mt/year of linear low-density polyethylene, 673,000 mt/year of high-density polyethylene and 575,000 mt/year of polyvinyl chloride, according to Platts.
