30 years ago: The Phillips Petroleum explosion in Pasadena and 'RoboCop 2' films in Houston

Explosion at Phillips Petroleum Co. plant in Pasadena, Oct. 23, 1989. Explosion at Phillips Petroleum Co. plant in Pasadena, Oct. 23, 1989. Photo: Steve Ueckert, Houston Chronicle Photo: Steve Ueckert, Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 74 Caption Close 30 years ago: The Phillips Petroleum explosion in Pasadena and 'RoboCop 2' films in Houston 1 / 74 Back to Gallery

Disasters of the man-made and natural kind struck the Houston area 30 years ago this month. But it wasn't all bad news. Here's a roundup of what happened in Bayou City back then.

* Twenty-three people were killed and 130 were injured on Oct. 23 when a series of explosions ripped through the Phillips Petroleum Co. complex in Pasadena. The first explosion was compared to an earthquake measuring 3.5 to 4.0 on the Richter scale, a Rice University professor of geology and geophysics told Houston Chronicle reporters R.A. Dyer and Bill DiSessa at the time.

From the next day's editions:

Workers apparently had a few seconds' warning before the explosion.

Plant workers who escaped described seeing a white mist or cloud billowing into the air. Seconds later, an emergency siren began sounding through the plant, and workers dropped everything and began running for their lives.

"I saw a white gas in the air. We heard the alarm," said contract worker Mike Sinai, 23, who was airlifted to Hermann for observation of his respiratory system and later was discharged.

Some survivors said they saw workers blown off their feet as they tried to run out of the plant.

"I saw a guy get hit with flying debris," Sinai said. "He didn't get up. Nobody stopped to help. People were falling into ditches."

As debris rained down around them, fire boats evacuated some plant workers immediately after the explosion and ferried them across the Ship Channel, said plant spokesman [Jerre] Smith.

Many area residents described harrowing moments. Shirley Morales, 37, who lives about a mile from the plant, was mopping her kitchen floor when "something started rumbling the house around."

"It knocked things off my walls and blew my windows and screens out. I thought a bomb had hit my house. I ran outside, and then I saw the flames," she said.

Windows were blown out of nearby schools, and concerned parents arrived to take their children home early.

According to a 1990 OSHA report, the Phillips Petroleum plant produced "high-density polyethylene, a plastic material used to make milk bottles and other containers. ... The accident resulted from a release of extremely flammable process gases that occurred during regular maintenance operations on one of the plant's polyethylene reactors. The evidence shows that more than 85,000 pounds of highly flammable gases were released through an open valve. A vapor cloud formed and traveled rapidly through the polyethylene plant. Within 90 to 120 seconds, the vapor cloud came into contact with an ignition source and exploded with the force of 2.4 tons of TNT."

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* Hurricane Jerry made landfall near Jamaica Beach on Galveston Island the morning of Oct. 16.

When it struck, no hurricane had made landfall on the upper Texas coast so late in the season as this Category 1 storm. Three deaths in Texas were attributed to the storm, which quickly moved through East Texas and into Arkansas.

One lasting effect from Jerry was that it served as the final nail in the coffin for a long-traveled, but desolate stretch of Texas 87 that ran through McFaddin National Wildlife Refuge from High Island to Sabine Pass. For decades, hurricanes battered the road, leaving state and federal highway officials to come in and fix it. Federal rules, rebuilding costs and a lack of land to rebuild the roadway contributed to that stretch of road's demise.

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* Filming for the climax of "RoboCop 2" took place in Houston's Theater District. As you can imagine, folks came out to see a small section of Houston get transformed into the streets of Detroit -- and some good ol' movie violence.

From R.A. Dyer's Oct. 13 Chronicle article:

[Yvonne] Breeden, like hundreds of other Houstonians, waited on the sidelines Thursday night as Hollywood movie makers meticulously crafted a final scene of "Robocop 2" behind the Wortham Center on Prairie. Many strolled across from Party on the Plaza, which is held every Thursday in front of Jones Hall. Others got off work, saw the lights and a 20-foot banner reading "The future has a silver lining" and were curious.

There wasn't a whole lot to see, though.

That didn't deter Kathy Mata and her friend Norma Valdez from coming out to watch from the corner of Prairie and Smith -- about a block away from the hole where [Peter] Weller emerged in his Robocop regalia.

"We haven't seen any good violence yet -- my favorite scenes are the violent ones. Next time we'll bring binoculars," Mata said.

J.R. Gonzales, a third-generation Houstonian, covers local history with an eye toward the people and events that have mostly been forgotten to time. Follow him through Bayou City History on Facebook and Twitter. He can be reached at 713-362-6163 or john.gonzales@chron.com.