Chuck Darwin<p>The huge US toxic fire shrouded in secrecy: ‘I taste oil in my mouth’ </p><p>At 8.04am on 25 August last year, Darnell Alboudoor watched a plume of <a href="https://c.im/tags/black" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>black</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/smoke" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>smoke</span></a> blanketing the sky and rolling in the direction of her family home.</p><p>A <a href="https://c.im/tags/stench" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>stench</span></a> like burning oil filled the air on that piping hot summer morning, as Alboudoor, 54, looked in the direction of the sprawling <a href="https://c.im/tags/petroleum" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>petroleum</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/refinery" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>refinery</span></a>, which sat a few hundred feet from her back yard. </p><p>She called 911.</p><p>“I’m just wondering what’s going on over there,” she told the operator. “Nobody tells us nothing.”</p><p>“They’re handling it,” the operator responded. “Nothing to worry about.” </p><p>There was no need to evacuate, Alboudoor was told, as she expressed her concerns over the fumes.</p><p>“I just want to know why we weren’t aware of this,” Alboudoor said. “Why are we just finding out about it now?”</p><p>Unbeknownst to Alboudoor and the thousands of other south-east Louisiana residents who lived next door, <br>🆘the facility had been leaking for more than 13 hours. <br>A storage tank containing at least 26,000 barrels of the flammable hydrocarbon <a href="https://c.im/tags/naphtha" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>naphtha</span></a> had been <br>💥on fire for about an hour and a half.</p><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/09/marathon-oil-fire-louisiana-cancer-alley?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">theguardian.com/us-news/articl</span><span class="invisible">e/2024/sep/09/marathon-oil-fire-louisiana-cancer-alley?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other</span></a></p>