A South Texas energy company’s facilities were destroyed by fire on Sunday but no one was injured in the city of Kenedy.
The fire happened Sunday afternoon at the Newpark Drilling Fluids company located in a former Walmart building in the city of Kenedy, located southeast of San Antonio.
The building was engulfed when firefighters arrived and after fighting it, they decided to back off and let it burn. A fire department spokesman indicated one factor in the decision was environmental concerns.
“These types of facilities … those things get fully involved and you try to fight them? You suppress the heat of the fire. Then those poisons don’t burn up as much,” said the spokesman. “And then all of that water runoff is contaminated. So here you’re facing kind of the same situation. Once they determined there was no way to save anything, they decided to back off and let it burn itself out.”