WHEN BURGLAR BARS KILL Additional obstacle in last night’s fire at the Copperwood Townhomes, on Imogene St. at the northern edge of the Westwood Golf Club: “The burglar bars ‘slowed us down a little bit getting in,’ said HFD District Chief Tommy Dowdy. ‘If (the occupants) tried to get out through the window, it would have been a deterrent.’ Firefighters discovered the man’s body in a ground-floor apartment.” [Houston Chronicle]
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Tag: Hazards
COMMENT OF THE DAY: NOT MUCH HAPPENING SOUTH OF CLEAR BROOK LANDING “. . . Beamer Road is a special case because of the Brio Superfund Site. There was a waste processing plant that had disposed of a great deal of material from various refineries by dumping it into earthen pits. That was not standard practice; this was Houston’s Love Canal. The Brio site has been contained to prevent additional seepage through the groundwater, but the pollution that’s there would be far too expensive to remediate. So yeah, unless your friend got a chunk of that sweet sweet settlement, he’s probably **** out of luck.” [TheNiche, commenting on Comment of the Day: Where the Townhomes Ain’t]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT LIES BENEATH “. . . roads go over top of petroleum pipelines all the time with an agreement & bond to protect them. Citie$, countie$ and large entitie$ do it all the time. The whole of the Woodlands Town Center, including the regional mall there, is built atop a pipeline, which runs alongside the foundation of the Anadarko Tower. Even Lake Robbins, though it’s not at all deep, is on top!” [movocelot, commenting on Comment of the Day: Where the Townhomes Ain’t]
HEIGHTS HOME FIRES STILL BURNING Early this morning: the 10th and 11th in a series of set blazes in the Heights, all targeting vacant homes. The latest were on 9th St. and 12th St.: “Before today, all the other fires had occurred along Ashland between 10th and 11th streets. Today’s fires were within three blocks of the previous blazes. District Chief Arthur Broussard said both fires appeared suspicious, and the second one appeared to start near an exterior staircase. Firefighters put it out within 15 minutes. ‘It’s pretty brazen, pretty brazen,’ he said of the second fire starting such a short distance from where firefighters and police were still on the scene of the first one.” [Houston Chronicle]
WOODLAND HEIGHTS NOW DOGGED BY GANG VIOLENCE A marauding pack of four-legged criminals has attacked and killed more than 6 pets in the Woodland Heights area: “[Recovery specialist Doug] Worthy said pets should be kept inside at night, if possible, and if people are out after dark, they should carry something like a bat to protect themselves. The pack of dogs are described as four to six brown and black mutts, weighing between 80 and 90 pounds.” [Click2Houston, via Heightsfolk]
Robert Boyd’s original remarks on the scraping of the Wilshire Village Apartments briefly mentioned another older apartment complex that Matt Dilick redeveloped and now runs: the Bayou on the Bend Apartments, at 5201 Memorial, just west of Shepherd. Boyd’s link to discussions of that complex at ratings website Apartment Ratings sparked a quick note from a reader:
It looks like Apartment Ratings attracts tenants who want to complain, but it seems like most of the gripes about other apartments focus on managers who are hard to deal with, thin walls, neighborhood crime, that sort of stuff. Have you read the reviews of Bayou on the Bend?
Bayou on the Bend gets a 35 percent positive rating from readers who have written in to comment — certainly not the lowest number for a large Houston complex. Here are a few choice excerpts:
ANOTHER RIVER RUNS THROUGH BAYTOWN Oil spill on the bayou: “The spill spread from an oil storage tank in the Mont Belvieu area, leaking into Smith Gully then on to Cedar Bayou. Mont Belvieu’s Emergency Management Chief Bruce Oliphant said best estimates put the spilled oil at 200 to 300 gallons but said a reason for the leak had not been determined by Tuesday afternoon. ‘We’re not sure why it leaked,’ Oliphant said. ‘We couldn’t see where it was coming from the tank and maybe it was coming from somewhere underground.’†[Baytown Sun]
CEDAR BAYOU AIR UPSETS The Sierra Club and a Texas environmental group have filed suit against Chevron Phillips claiming a bonus supply of air pollutants and toxic chemicals has been escaping from the company’s Cedar Bayou chemical plant just north of I-10 in Baytown: “‘Like many companies in Texas, Chevron Phillips has repeatedly violated its own permit limits by emitting a wide range of harmful pollutants into the air from the Cedar Bayou plant,’ said Luke Metzger, Director of Environment Texas. ‘Because the state of Texas has failed to stop such violations at Cedar Bayou and elsewhere, citizen groups have had to step up and enforce the law themselves.’ The Clean Air Act contains a ‘citizen suit’ provision that allows private citizens affected by violations of the law to bring an enforcement suit in federal court if state and federal regulators do not. . . . Chevron Phillips’s permits contain both hourly and yearly limits on the amounts of pollutants it can emit into the atmosphere. The lawsuit alleges that equipment breakdowns, malfunctions, and other non-routine incidents at the Cedar Bayou complex have resulted in the release of more than a million pounds of pollutants into the surrounding air, frequently in violation of legal limits. A single such ‘upset’ or ’emission event’ can result in the release of tens of thousands of pounds of air pollutants in a matter of hours or even minutes.” [Environment Texas, via Houston Chronicle]
HOUSTON-AREA MORTGAGE STORM SURGE: NOW A QUARTER UNDER WATER Another few months, another one of those studies from research firm First American CoreLogic — this one using data from the end of June. By that date, the firm says, 26.15 percent of all Houston-Sugar Land- Baytown-area mortgages were in a “negative equity” position. Add in the “up to their eyeballs” crowd of mortgage-holders who are within 5 percentage points of owing more than their homes are worth, and the figure rises to 33.86 percent. That’s a marked increase from the figures in the firm’s March study, which used data from September 2008. [First American CoreLogic; previously on Swamplot]
The old Bruce Elementary School on Bringhurst St. in the Fifth Ward — featured on Swamplot just last week and apparently just about ready to go up for sale — went up in flames last Friday night, reports our neighborhood correspondent. A story featured on Abc13 news says the building did suffer major damage from the flames, and makes it sound as if arson is suspected. Did any of the asbestos do its job?
- Vacant elementary school catches fire [Abc13]
- The Fifth Ward’s Old Bruce Elementary School: Lead Scraped and Ready! [Swamplot]
Photo of former Bruce Elementary School, 713 Bringhurst St.: Vaughn Mueller
Swamplot’s new “Bottom” of the Fifth Ward correspondent Vaughn Mueller reports from the site of the old Bruce Elementary School, where a sign indicates the property is for sale. A source tells Swamplot that a few details need to be worked out before it’s “officially” on the market, but an HISD web page provides some information about the property.
The school, which was closed at the end of the spring 2007 semester, sits along Cage and Bringhurst on the I-10 feeder road, and comprises a little more than 2 blocks. Mueller reports that the new Bruce Elementary (built by a 2002 HISD bond) less than a mile away on Jensen opened its doors in the fall of 2007.
Why the move?
It’s tagger war! Always on the lookout for dramatic artistic expression, blogger Sean Carroll snaps photos of the custom balcony paint jobs on this set of unfinished townhomes not far from his home. The site: Eichwurzel Ln., just west of Lindale Park and steps from the I-45 feeder. Reports Carroll:
they’ve been tagged for about two or three months, the parking lot in front of the townhomes is a messy half-finished lot, and it looks like they never finished the buildings. no occupants. kids are sneaking in and tagging the hell out of the inside probably too…
More views:
Good news for the residents of Grace Ln. who back up to that Griggs Rd. waste treatment and disposal facility run by CES Environmental Services! It’ll probably be a while before another thermal oxidizer ruptures and sends four-foot-wide metal pieces flying over their back fences again:
“I mean, this was metal that could have decapitated people,†[Grace Ln. resident and salon owner Kimberly Sadberry] said. “It was sharp. We had to put it on a dolly to take it back, it was that heavy.â€
CES assured residents nothing like that would ever happen again, but less than two weeks later, another explosion occurred, she said.
Why the grace period now? Responding to complaints about intermittent explosions and noxious smells emanating from the plant — as well as the fiery death last month of a CES employee as he attempted to clean a tanker truck — police officers and federal agents raided the facility yesterday morning. And figuring out what’s really going on there might take a while:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: MEMORIAL HIGHWAY “I really like the memorials constructed at ‘death-sites’ along roadways: They honor the deceased and alert us to risks, causing us to reflect on how easy it is to die in traffic accidents. I first saw this memorial custom on Grand Cayman Island where signs were erected at the sites of traffic fatalities. Years ago there were only a few, and, the twisted, rusty car wreckages were left in-situ as well. It was vivid and effective: Like performance-art really; Printed in white on the circular, black signs: ‘Accident Black Spot.’” [movocelot, commenting on Comment of the Day: What To Expect on That First Night in Your New Funeral Home]
Katy residents living near a pool supply company got breathtaking views of the spectacular black plumes emanating from the RAM Chemical and Supply warehouse at 4949 Greenhouse Rd. during last weekend’s fire.
But the fun wasn’t entirely over: A separate episode yesterday resulted in a shelter-in-place order for a few hours last night — for downwind neighborhoods east of the Windstone Colony subdivision, stretching from Greenhouse Rd. to Barker Cypress. Fire officials warned of toxic clouds billowing out from a supply of hazardous chemicals still housed in the singed remains of the warehouse.
- Breaking News, Ram Chemical Warehouse Fire! [YouTube]
- RAM Chemical Fire, the Day After [iReport]
- Shelter In Place Order Lifted [Click2Houston]
- Warehouse fire prompts shelter-in-place [abc13]
- Cy-Fair warehouse fire prompts air-quality concerns [Houston Chronicle]
Video: Kevin Neugebauer