A catastrophic chlorine gas leak at Olin Corporation’s Freeport facility on May 20 released over 8,000 pounds of hazardous chemicals, marking Texas’s most significant such incident in years. Despite the scale of the emergency, residents report that official warnings were delayed or never received, raising serious concerns about the effectiveness of local chemical emergency alert systems.
Texas’s most significant chlorine gas leak in years occurred at Olin Corporation's Freeport plant on May 20, which released more than 8,000 pounds of poisonous, greenish-yellow chlorine gas over 48 minutes.
This was Texas's most significant illegal chlorine release since 2020.
Even though it was hazardous, people in the area reported not receiving timely government notifications. Instead, they learned about the threat through social media or word of mouth, not emergency alerts.
Gary Witt is the chair of the environmental group Better Brazoria and a retired resident of Surfside Beach. He said he only learned about the leak from posts on a local Facebook group, even though he lived close enough to the industrial complex to see it from his porch.
Olin's Blue Cube Operations filed with the state that the leak started at 8:15 a.m., but the company didn't make its first public comment until 9:00 a.m., which is more than 45 minutes after the leak began.
According to a study of state pollution statistics by the Houston Chronicle, this was the most significant accidental release of chlorine in Texas in the past five years. The event was labeled a Level 3 emergency, which is the highest level of chemical danger and means that there was a high chance of many deaths and property damage that the local government could not fix.
There were 11 emergency sirens around the plant, but many people didn't hear them. The Brazosport Community Awareness and Emergency Response (CAER) program, which is responsible for chemical emergency alerts, stated that the sirens were never activated because Olin did not request them to be. Some local officials posted false information online about this choice, saying that the alarms had gone off.
Melanie Oldham, who has lived in Freeport for a long time, and other residents stated that the public warning system failed, leaving neighbors to rely on unofficial networks for important information. She emphasized the importance of effective communication, saying, "We need to warn each other and get information out there effectively."
Following the incident, there are calls to review emergency plans to ensure the public's safety in future chemical crises
