A remote processing plant operated by Seattle-based Peter Pan Seafoods near Alaska's Aleutian Islands has been heavily damaged by fire.

Peter Pan spokesman Dale Schiffler confirms a fire at the Port Moller plant, but declines to provide further details.

But Bob Murphy, a state Fish and Game fisheries biologist assigned to the area for the summer fishing season, says the fire broke out Tuesday night and continues to burn as of Wednesday afternoon. He says no one was injured.

Murphy says the plant offices, the processing section and the facility's large freezer were destroyed. Still standing are housing quarters for about 150 workers, the egg processing house and part of the dock.

Murphy says a cause is not immediately known.

Port Moller is an unincorporated area on the Alaska Peninsula.

Copyright 2017 KING </s> The Peter Pan Seafoods processing plant in Port Moller has been devastated by a massive fire that burned through the night and into Wednesday morning.

No one has been reported injured, but power, running water and most phone and internet connections are down in remote community.

“The fire started kind of in the production end of things, kind of the freezing warehouse at Peter Pan Seafoods last night. And consumed most of the production facilities that we can tell,” said Bob Murphy, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game area management biologist based in Port Moller.

Murphy was reached a little before 8 a.m. Wednesday.

“Nobody’s been able to get down there because the fire’s still going. There’s obviously very, very extensive damage to the main production facility and office for Peter Pan, [it] is definitely consumed in fire. We can’t see some of the facilities on the other dock because the smoke is so heavy, so we don’t know what the status of those are … obviously still there’s a fire going on at this time. The main warehouses and all the living quarters are OK, and everybody’s safe, is the main thing.”

Murphy had just gone into work to try and restore the state services.

“I’m literally on my knees in the office right now trying to plug stuff in,” Murphy said. “We’ve got emergency generators here so we can get a functioning office right now, because all the power is out in Port Moller.”

A fisherman who watched the fire from his vessel reported that he saw flames shooting 150 feet high.

“The dock was cut to prevent the fire from basically coming towards more buildings,” Murphy confirmed, who said it was burning past the point of being able to contain it.

The cause of the fire has not been given.

Port Moller is “Peter Pan’s most remote facility,” according to the company website. The PPSF corporate office in Seattle had not offered comment by 9 a.m.

Murphy offered his best perspective on the firefighting efforts that were still ongoing.

“They have fire suppression systems here, and they’ve got water lines and hoses and such, and those were all used early on trying to keep the fire at bay, but it’s a 100-plus-year-old building, buildings, and lots of old timber and dry timber, and once it got going it was really hard, couldn’t stop it,” he said. “It went on for several hours, probably at least two hours I think, maybe two and a half, before it just got so intense. And now you’re down to where there’s fuel and there’s ammonia tanks and lines, and gets to the point where it starts being very dangerous to be around, and there was no way to keep fighting it.”

Murphy said he will continue to publish catch and escapement numbers for the Area M North Peninsula fisheries, and will likely make management decisions today as well, but he’s not sure if the fleet will be able to fish without their buyer able to take the catch.

“I have no what’s going to happen, but they will not be processing fish at the Port Moller plant, that’s for sure,” Murphy said. </s> Details are emerging slowly on the fire at the Peter Pan Seafoods processing plant in Port Moller.

The 100-year-old plant caught fire late Tuesday night, and the blaze continued to burn Wednesday.

The full scope of the damage is still unclear, but witnesses say it is extensive.

“The main processing facility is located on the dock. About 40 percent of the structures on the dock were affected by the fire,” said Precision Air’s Theo Chesley, who flew an aerial survey over the smoldering buildings Wednesday morning. “It looked like it could have been much worse, but the main generator systems, the cold storage, the refrigeration plant, the holding area and office all were devastated by the fire. About 60 percent of the other structures there on the dock did not burn. However, they could have been affected by the heat.”

Limited power and water have been restored to the plant.

Chesley estimated Thursday morning that there were more than 100 employees at plant employees still in Port Moller.

A winter generator, which is powering the cafeteria but little beyond that, survived the fire, he said.

“Anybody with a pulse and air taxi is trying to help these guys out right now,” Chesley said, describing the effort he and other pilots are making to fly workers out of Port Moller. “The wind is blowing about 35 miles per hour and visibility is not that great, so everybody’s just trying to do what we can and help these people out because they’re in a pretty tough situation.”

Fisherman Jared Danielson fought the blaze early Wednesday morning with a group on the beach while boats tackled it from the water.

They worked hard for about two hours to contain the blaze until building where the fire began collapsed.

“After it collapsed in that small area, we couldn’t get to that section that was still blazing,” Danielson said. “Basically once the wind got to it again, it just spread. We had to basically give up and let it run its course.”

No deaths or serious injuries have been reported, and the cause of the fire is still not clear.

Peter Pan Seafoods had not provided comment as of Thursday afternoon. However, Danielson said a representative from the company spoke to the Port Moller area over VHF radio Wednesday.

Danielson also spoke with that representative personally.

“We’re going to rebuild with new state-of-the-art technology is the plan. That’s what I was told,” Danielson said. “This fishery has been around a long time, so would only hope that they would do that. I’m third-generation fisherman in Port Moller. It would be devastating if they were just to let this cannery go away and never rebuild.”

For this year, Danielson said that for most fishing out of Port Moller, this signals an abrupt end to the season.

The fire also poses a complication for hauling boats out of the water.

A portion of the dock was cut away to contain the fire.

Danielson said that some boats that planned on hauling out for the winter at Port Moller may have to go elsewhere. </s> Stories are posted on the APRN news page. You can subscribe to APRN’s newsfeeds via email, podcast and RSS. Follow us on Facebook at alaskapublic.org and on Twitter @aprn

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The fire began late Wednesday morning at ExxonMobil's Baytown Olefins Plant at a unit that contains polypropylene material.

Residents were urged to shelter in place for hours because of concern about the air quality. The advisory was lifted after monitoring didn't detect any "levels of concern," Baytown officials said Wednesday afternoon.

Officials said 66 employees and contractors were examined at a health clinic Wednesday.

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Authorities say 66 people were sent for medical evaluation after an explosion and fire at an ExxonMobil oil refinery in Texas on Wednesday.

The fire began after an explosion just after 11:00 a.m. at an ExxonMobil plant in Baytown, about 25 miles east of Houston. The facility processes light hydrocarbons including propane and propylene, materials used to make plastic and industrial products.

Right after the explosion, the fire sent large plumes of black smoke into the sky. By Wednesday afternoon, the smoke had lessened. The fire was not fully extinguished by Wednesday evening, but authorities lifted a shelter-in-place order that impacted approximately 5,000 people in the area once the blaze was contained.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality was on scene monitoring for air quality issues, but did not report any concerning contaminants.

Harris County Homeland Security and Emergency Management released a statement after the fire was contained that ExxonMobil reported 66 of its employees and contractors were sent for medical evaluation.

Jason Duncan, the plant manager, said earlier that many of those hurt suffered minor burns and all were being treated at a local clinic.

All employees at the plant had been accounted for, officials said.

"It is our number one priority to protect the people in the community and the people that work for us," Duncan said.

The Harris County Fire Marshal's Office is investigating the what caused the fire.

Wednesday's fire is the latest at a Houston-area petrochemical facility this year, including one at another facility on the ExxonMobil Baytown complex.

On March 16, a fire erupted at a refinery at the complex. The fire was extinguished hours later, but Harris County officials say it continued to release toxic pollutants for eight more days. The county has sued ExxonMobil, accusing the company of violating the federal Clean Air Act.

Also in March, a fire burned for days at a petrochemical storage facility owned by Intercontinental Terminals Company in nearby Deer Park and caused chemicals to flow into a nearby waterway. After the fire, the Harris County District Attorney's Office filed water pollution charges against ITC.

In April, one worker died after a tank holding a flammable chemical caught fire at a plant operated by KMCO LLC in nearby Crosby.

Prior to Wednesday's fire, Harris County had conducted an analysis of how local officials and agencies respond to such incidents in the wake of the petrochemical complex fires from earlier this year, said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo.

Some of the steps the county is taking as a result of this analysis include asking for more air monitors, improving how the public is informed about such incidents and improving communication between agencies that respond to such incidents. Hidalgo said the county fire marshal's office is also working to increase its inspections of area petrochemical facilities.

"It's not right for us to live next to a petrochemical complex and live in fear sometimes. So we have to improve on the situation and we are doing so," said Hidalgo, who is the top administrator in Harris County, where Houston is located.

The plant in Wednesday's explosion and fire is part of the company's 3,400-acre refinery complex in Baytown.

According to records kept by the Environmental Protection Agency, the plant had 68 tons of ethylene on site in 2017. It also had large quantities of other potentially hazardous chemicals, including ammonia, benzene, and propylene.

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A spokeswoman for the Electric Power Authority said Wednesday that officials are trying to determine what happened. The firefighting department said on Twitter that crews were on their way to put out a large fire at an electric plant in southern Puerto Rico that serves a majority of clients on the island of 3.5 million people.

Heavy storms are affecting the area where the plant is located.

The widespread outage is snarling traffic as people prepare to leave work.

It is unclear when power would be restored.

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A large fire continues to burn at the Peter Pan Seafoods fish processing plant in Port Moller, Alaska, on the Alaska Peninsula. Much of the facility has been destroyed, and the plant is out of commission. Power is out in the village.