“It sounded like a bomb went off”: Residents react after refinery explosion
By Luke Laster
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WHITE LAKE TOWNSHIP, Michigan (WWJ) — White Lake police and township fire officials are working to discover the cause of an explosion at a refinery plant in White Lake Friday night.
It happened shortly before 10:30 p.m. in the area of Young Road and Bogie Lake Road.
It took a few hours before crews put it out, and White Lake Township’s fire chief, John Holland, says they don’t yet know what caused the flames.
“Everything shook. I was afraid. I didn’t know what the heck was happening,” says White Lake resident Chelsea Vanhorn.
Vanhorn lives in Cedarbrook Estates, a mobile home park just over a mile away from the fossil fuel recovery plant owned and operated by Hound Resources.
“My plants fell off my shelves. I thought we got bombed,” Vanhorn said.
Following what Vanhorn said was the explosion that shook her home, other residents of the mobile home park found themselves outside with their phones rolling around 10:30 p.m. Friday. It was then that she caught a second explosion on camera (seen in the video above).
She says she didn’t even know a refinery was nearby. Many of her neighbors didn’t know either.
“We all go down by the clubhouse, you know. Try to follow it to see what it is, and it was a huge fire. The biggest fire I’ve seen. It was huge and the blackest smoke. It was so black. Itwas very scary,” Vanhorn said.
An investigation into the incident is ongoing.
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