A tug pushing two barges collided with an oil tanker in the Houston Ship Channel, causing one barge to capsize and the other is damaged, the U.S. Coast Guard said in a statement. The barges were transporting gasoline blend stock Reformate, which is leaking into the water, officials said. There are no reported injuries at this time. An estimated 25,000 tons of gasoline stock were on each barge and an unknown amount had been released, the Coast Guard said. A helicopter aircrew and a boat crew were both deployed to assess the situation. A Port Houston Fire Department fireboat plus oil spill response, air monitoring and salvage personnel are responding, the Coast Guard said. The city of Seabrook acknowledged a strong smell coming from the collision, but said it is "not getting any reports that the air quality is impacted. Residents do not need to take any action at this time," CBS Houston affiliate KHOU-TV reports. The Coast Guard said air monitoring is being conducted. Galveston County officials warned that if anyone smelled gasoline, they should stay indoors and avoid the coastline, KHOU-TV reports.<doc-sep>The Houston Ship Channel reopened Sunday as crews continued to clean up the scene of a collision Friday between two vessels, which spilled an estimated 9,000 barrels of gasoline blend into the busy waterway. Deep draft ships can now enter and exit the channel, although only while under tow so as to minimize their wakes as salvage operations are conducted, Unified Command officials said at a news conference. The channel was closed after the 755-foot tanker Genesis River, which was carrying liquefied natural gas, collided Friday afternoon with a tug boat pushing two barges. One barge capsized and the other was damaged, leaking a gasoline product called reformate, a highly flammable chemical that's mixed with gasoline and is dangerous to marine life. The man-made, 50-mile channel is one of the busiest ports in the world, and even short closures can carry a hefty price tag for companies that have to delay or re-route shipments. Cleanup efforts continued over the weekend. Officials estimated it will take up to two days to remove the fuel from the cargo tanks of the vessels involved in the collision. The removal has been complicated by the fact that the capsized barge is floating upside down. Because normal cargo access is underwater, a crew will have to cut through the barge's steel hull to remove its hazardous cargo. Jim Guidry, executive vice president of Kirby Inland Marine, which owns the barges, said they currently have almost 400 people working to mitigate impacts and clean up the spill. The Texas Department of State Health Services has halted oyster harvesting in Galveston Bay and advises against eating fish caught north of the line between Texas City Dike and Smith Point. Already, there have been reported wildlife deaths in the vicinity. "We have received some reports of wildlife impacts," said Craig Kartye of the Texas General Land Office's oil spill prevention program. "Specifically two dead seagulls located near the source of the incident, one dead raccoon in the city of Kemah and some dead fish at one spot along the west shoreline of Galveston Bay." He said wildlife rehabilitation teams were responding to the reports. Despite that, he said, the water is not dangerous for humans, which is why they've opted to re-open the channel. Crews deployed 3,800 feet of boom around the barges to contain the spill; more than 12,000 feet of additional boom was being deployed to protect sensitive areas around the bay. "We've collected 2,700 samples, none of which exceeded the established action levels," he said. Officials are still investigating the cause of the collision. Capt. Kevin Oditt of the Coast Guard said a team had retrieved voice recordings and data from the vessels and was in the process of collecting statements. He declined to offer specifics on what he said is an ongoing investigation into the spill, but said that the National Transportation Safety Board will also investigate. It's not the first investigation into crashes on the 530-foot-wide channel. In March 2014, a collision closed the channel and caused a spill of 168,000 gallons of bunker fuel oil. In March 2015, roughly 88,000 gallons of a hazardous additive to gasoline spilled into the channel after another collision. It was the fifth accident investigated by NTSB in as many years, and prompted the agency's chairman to urge officials to adopt better safety procedures along the channel. Authorities monitoring the air reported finding one detectable concentration of a volatile organic compound, but said it did not show up in subsequent tests, the Associated Press reported. Residents near the scene had reported a strong smell of gasoline. Chambers County officials said in a statement Sunday morning that "environmental monitoring stations are in place, and at this time impacts are not being detected within the county." Guidry said he hopes his company will learn from the spill. "We're always concerned about incidents like this, and I think the whole industry works together to prevent them," he said. "We'll all learn from this incident and make the Ship Channel safer." The closure was the first since March, when a massive chemical storage tank fire broke out at Intercontinental Terminals Co. in Deer Park. Petroleum products spilled into nearby waterways during that environmental disaster. That three-day closure cost the energy industry about $1 billion, experts estimated. The Harris County District Attorney's Office has since filed five environmental charges against ITC, accusing the company of "criminal levels" of contamination. ITC responded initially that although it had not seen the charges, "there is no question that there was a large fire and an enormous effort to extinguish it which resulted in a discharge into Tucker Bayou." Maria Burns, director of the University of Houston's logistics and transportation program, estimated at the time that closing the channel for a few days typically costs about $500 million in delayed shipments and lost materials for the thousands of companies that use the channel. She said it could cost another $500 million in indirect costs. rebecca.schuetz@chron.com robert.downen@chron.com<doc-sep>(CNN) — Ship and barge traffic is resuming in the Houston Ship Channel as cleanup efforts continue in the aftermath of a spill that sent thousands of barrels of gasoline blending product into the channel, officials said Sunday. The spill came after a collision in the channel Friday between a 755-foot oil tanker and a tug pushing two barges. The impact capsized one barge, damaged the other and triggered the leak of gasoline blending stock that the barges were carrying, the US Coast Guard said. The barges – pushed by the towing vessel Voyager – were loaded with the gasoline blending component reformate, which leaked into the water after the collision near Bayport, Texas, officials said. About 9,000 barrels of reformate spilled into the channel, according to incident commander Jim Guidry, an executive with Kirby Inland Marine, owner and operator of the Voyager. There were no reported injuries during the collision with the tanker, the Genesis River. An estimated 25,000 barrels of gasoline blend stock were loaded on each barge, a Coast Guard statement said. Here is an estimate of where the gasoline-like odor from the barge collision may reach overnight (Midnight to 6 am). The stronger order will be mainly east of I-45 from near Webster to Bayport. pic.twitter.com/iElSvH0LDj — NWS Houston (@NWSHouston) May 11, 2019 Federal, state and local agencies are involved in the cleanup and environmental monitoring. A statement from those agencies Sunday said that the damaged barges have been secured and efforts were underway to remove cargo from the barges. “Work is expected to continue throughout the day with an established priority of ensuring the protection of (Galveston) Bay from the additional release of product,” the statement said. Officials at a news conference Sunday said some 2,700 air monitoring samples from the area had been taken and none of them exceeded “established action levels,” meaning they don’t pose a health risk at this point. Water quality testing is being done along the bay, the statement said. CNN’s Hollie Silverman, Ray Sanchez and Shawn Nottingham contributed to this report.<doc-sep>“The bow of the ship went through the port tank into the starboard tank, so there was no way to secure the source of the leak,” Guidry said, according the Houston Chronicle. “Those two tanks were open to the sea.”<doc-sep>
Authorities warned about the smell of gas, but had not ordered evacuations. A collision between a massive tanker and two oil barges has resulted in as much as tens of thousands of gallons of a gasoline product leaking into a shipping channel near Houston. The U.S. Coast Guard confirmed the accident, which took place about 3:30 p.m. local time, in the Houston Ship Channel, near Bayport, Texas. A 755-foot tanker collided with a tug pushing two barges filled with 25,000 gallons of reformate each. The hull of the tanker punctured two of the barges’ four storage tanks, Jim Guidry, executive Vice President of Kirby Corporation, which owns the barges, said at a Saturday morning press conference, the Houston Chronicle reported. “The bow of the ship went through the port tank into the starboard tank, so there was no way to secure the source of the leak,” Guidry said, according to the newspaper “Those two tanks were open to the sea.” Reformate is an intermediate stage in the production of gasoline and is colorless, flammable and toxic to marine life. Air monitoring tests were completed overnight and results released on Saturday morning found there was no danger to the public found, according to Houston ABC station KTRK. . Officials said that 26 teams of air monitors have taken over 1300 samples. All samples have not exceeded actionable levels. Reformate is an intermediate stage in the production of gasoline and is colorless, flammable and toxic to marine life. It is still unclear how much of the product has leaked into the water, officials said. Eyewitnesses said they could see an oily sheen on the water and the smell was very strong. "We know the air is coming this way. The flow is coming this way. We are definitely going to monitor everything," Mayor Jeff Wagner, of Pasadena, Texas told KTRK. One of the barges capsized, while the other was severely damaged, according to the Coast Guard. Video from on scene showed one barge nearly sliced in half as a result of the collision. There were no reported injuries. Air Station Houston sent a helicopter and ship to assess the situation, according to the USCG. "It's a light chemical and it floats on the water, which allows it to evaporate," Galveston Bay Foundation CEO Bob Stokes told KTRK. "Unlike other chemicals, it doesn't sink to the bottom, but it still poses risks to marine life." Houston's Department of Health said in a statement that due to wind conditions it did not expect any adverse effects in the city itself. The Coast Guard said late Friday of the air monitoring that "if any readings above actionable levels are detected, advisories will be provided to local emergency operations centers." There have been no evacuation orders given. The tanker was identified as the Genesis River, a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) carrier. The shipping channel was closed in the area of the accident.