DEER PARK, Texas — New video sent to KHOU Wednesday gave us a closer look at what remains of a natural gas liquid-fueled fire in Deer Park as well as the heavily damaged SUV witnesses saw strike a valve that sparked the inferno on Monday morning.
“I see that white SUV go up, I don’t know how high," witness Veronica Martinez said. "Just saw it go up and fall, in flames.”
Martinez was at an adjacent urgent care with her 3-year-old son who wasn’t feeling well.
It's the same building where a dash camera caught a reflection of the SUV leaving the roadway and going through a fence before striking the pipeline.
"There’s a fire, like super big fire," Martinez said. "Everybody panicked.”
She left in such a hurry she left her vehicle behind and ran in the opposite direction with her son in tow.
You could see her white SUV from Air11 on Wednesday still sitting in the parking lot where she hadn’t been allowed to return.
“As soon as we opened that front door, just the heat that you felt was so intensely strong," Martinez said. "So, at that point, our instinct was just to get out.”
Martinez watched as pipeline, utility, and emergency crews worked diligently over the last few days and hoped things would quickly get as back to normal as possible.
But she hated to think about what happened to the driver whose charred vehicle remains at the scene that Deer Park police cannot fully assess until the fire is completely out.
“I mean, a million things could’ve happened in a scenario like that," Martinez said. "You just never know.”
CenterPoint reported Wednesday that repairs were complete to all of the distribution lines affected by the pipeline fire.
The evacuation order was lifted at 6 p.m. Wednesday.