CORPUS CHRISTI TEXAS — With many residents describing it as an unsettling way to wake up on a Saturday morning, the effects of a storage facility fire that left seven people injured left an impression on the residents living directly across from the facility.
According to the Corpus Christi Police Department, the fire broke out at a storage tank at the 1800 block of Poth Lane around 10 a.m.
Latrell Smith lives near the 950 block of Poth — that’s on the other side of I-37. He was with his two children when they heard what they described as an explosion.
“Sounded like somebody ran into my house with the car,” Smith said. “The whole neighborhood was covered in a black cloud — it was pretty bad.”
He and his sons agreed it was a scary moment.
“His house started like shaking,” his elementary-age son Michael Smith described.
A few houses down, 85-year-old Frank George Longoria said he was cleaning his property early Saturday morning when he felt something unusual.
“(I was) taking rocks up out of here — boom — and I felt the jolt,” Longoria said, pointing above a utility pole, showing where the cloud of black smoke sat. “The smoke went above the trees.”
Longoria, thinking of those who have been injured — all of which are burn related — said he wishes the explosion didn’t happen.
“It’s bad — it’s not a good thing. Not good for anybody, even the people who don’t get hurt,” Longoria said. “And I thank — pray to the lord that nobody got killed. There were seven people that got hurt, but I don’t know if they got killed or not.”
