Harris County Moves To Crack Down On Environmental Crime
Just over two months have passed since a fire broke out at the ITC chemical plant in Deer Park, sending a plume of black smoke over much of Houston. It’s one of the latest such fires that has ignited new calls for accountability from both Harris County officials and residents.
Forty-year-old Ebunoluwa Akinola remembers the day the fire started all too well. “My mother called and woke me up and said, ‘Hey, are you alive?’” he said. “And I was like, ‘Wait a minute. What do you mean am I alive? Good morning.’ She was like, ‘Well, I just saw that there was a plant that blew up, and I was hoping it wasn’t the one directly next to your house.’”
Akinola lives next to the Eco Services chemical plant, one of many in southeast Houston, and about a mile from ITC. He followed the shelter-in-place order after the ITC fire, but he said within days that his eyes burned, his throat clogged up and he grew nauseous. And when the fire reignited on March 22, he said things got much worse.
“My whole left side of my body was going numb, and it was freezing cold,” he said.
Akinola called 911. Paramedics found him on the floor and rushed him to the nearby Saint Joseph Medical Center. He’d suffered a minor heart attack and developed acute bronchitis that hasn’t left him. He wants to know if ITC is to blame. If so, he wants Harris County to do something.
Read more: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/in-depth/2019/05/20/332922/harris-county-moves-to-crack-down-on-environmental-crime/
