Blasts Rip Texas Plant; 109 Injured, 22 Missing : Fireball: Authorities confirm that one person is dead. Debris from plastics facility is hurled for miles.

Three explosions ripped through a sprawling plastics plant on the Houston Ship Channel Monday, sending a huge orange ball of flame into the air and hurling chunks of metal and other debris for miles. One person was confirmed dead and at least 109 were injured.

An additional 22 people were reported missing, said Pasadena Mayor John Ray Harrison. As the hours wore on, that number did not change as fire and rescue officials were unable to get inside the plant because of the intensity of the fire.

As darkness fell over the plant, fire officials still had not doused the blaze, though it was under control. The blasts were so powerful that they buckled a ceiling and blew out windows at an elementary school more than a mile away. None of the more than 700 students were injured, and they were sent home early.

Windows were broken at a nearby shopping mall and telephone service was knocked out in parts of Pasadena, a gritty working-class city to the southeast of Houston. More windows were broken at Pasadena City Hall, about three miles from the sprawling 800-acre complex owned by the Phillips Petroleum Co., which has its headquarters in Bartlesville, Okla. Seismologists at Rice University said the explosion was roughly the equivalent of 10 tons of TNT.

“It looked like an atomic bomb going off,” said witness Jim Baccus.

Phillips President Glenn Cox, who flew to Pasadena from Bartlesville Monday afternoon, said company officials were cross-checking their personnel files in an attempt to determine the whereabouts of each employee.

Cox said that of the 109 who were treated at hospitals, 33 were admitted, with as many as six of those in critical condition.

The first of the explosions occurred at 11:05 a.m. in the plant that produces highly flammable polyethylene, the kind of plastic used to make such things as milk jugs and plastic bags.

According to witnesses who escaped the blast, there was first the sound of leaking gas and then the wail of the warning siren. The first of the explosions occurred 20 seconds later. The next two blasts were at one-minute intervals. Kelly Mannerly, a plant worker, said he heard hissing for about five minutes before the siren and explosion. Employees raced to get out of the plant, one of five on the Phillips complex.

“A siren went off and, as we were evacuating . . . you could see a low fire coming down through the unit . . . and then the whole thing went up,” said Bill Mann, who works at the facility. “The compression came our way and knocked everybody down.”

Another witness, Lupe Garcia, said he started running the second he heard the siren.

“I was running away from there and it just blew me off the ground,” he said.

Bill Stoltz, the environmental director at the plant, told reporters that the accident apparently occurred because a seal broke out on an ethylene loop reactor. The force of the explosion damaged most of the firefighting equipment inside the plant, including the automatic sprinkler system.

Firefighters answering the alarms were forced to use water from the ship channel as well as a nearby sewage treatment plant. At least five fire departments sent firemen to the scene.

Ambulances lined the roadways leading to the plant, one of dozens along the channel that produces petrochemical products and refines oil. The U.S. Coast Guard, fearing the fires might ignite tankers that ply the nearby waterway, closed the ship channel for most of the day but opened it back up Monday night. About 2 million barrels of crude oil and petrochemical products are moved up and down the 50-mile-long channel each day.

The flames of the blast could be seen as far as 15 miles away and the smoke, which was nontoxic, spread over neighboring Houston. The pungent odor from the burning chemicals spread for miles. Highway 225, which is near the plant, was closed by officials but thousands parked their cars to watch the flames shooting from the plant.

Several fires were visible beneath dense smoke in the Phillips complex and patches of grass smoldered outside.

Mike Sinai, one of the plant workers, said he escaped from the plant with only seconds to spare.

“There were guys behind me,” he said. “If they were five seconds behind me, they didn’t make it,” he said.

Cox said he did not think there would be full access to the plant until sometime today, after the fire had been completely extinguished.

“It looks like all of the polyethylene plant has been severely damaged,” he said.

More than 900 people work in shifts at the plant, which was built in 1948. It is one of the larger producers of polyethylene, manufacturing about 1.5 billion pounds a year.

Phillips spokesman Dave Dryden said that telephone lines had been set up both in Bartlesville and Houston, partly in the hope that those who remained unaccounted for would call.

“I could see all kinds of debris in the air,” said Roy Berry, who saw the explosion. “There were sheets of aluminum about 4 to 6 feet long falling.”

Another witness, Glen Dickey, said he found a 6-foot-long piece of metal in his tree.

“Pieces of stuff were falling out of the sky,” he said.