Fire Fighter at Yoakum Packing Co. (Sharon Tan)
Jasmina Kocurek
JKocurek@Victoriatelevision.com
Contributor: Sharon Tan
Updated: 8/20 12:11 pm
YOAKUM, TEXAS
Employees at the Yoakum Packing Company had to be evacuated from the plant early Thursday morning.
According to Yoakum Fire Chief Mark Herchek, they were called out at 6:30 am an employee doing a routine check opened the ammonia valve too far and was not able to close it again.
The ammonia is used at the plant for refrigeration.
It took firefighters three attempts to shut the leak off because of the amount of ammonia gas relased in the building.
The plant remains full of ammonia at this time and fire crews are running forced air fans to vent the gas from the building.
A one block area around the plant is shut down. Herchek initially thought that the gas would be cleared out by noon, but has revised that time to 1 or 2 pm.
No one has been injured by the gas.