By JACOB LOPEZ
Staff Writer
reporter@sbnewspaper.com
A recent video from a Saturday football game at Bobby Morrow Stadium in San Benito captured an explosion in the vicinity of the old La Palma power plant off Stenger Road.
Also, plumes of black smoke could be seen from at least a few miles away and emanating from the vicinity of the blast.
Questions have since sprouted concerning the stability of the old power plant and its current status.
“It has gone through three companies that have purchased that plant,” said San Benito Assistant City Manager Arturo Rodriguez. “I don’t know what the plans are other than to actually bring everything down, but I really don’t know that for a fact.”
Rodriguez explained that there have been no immediate plans introduced other than to slowly demolish the plant and salvage any useful components.
Candy Divin, the listing agent for the plant, had not been informed of the explosion until contact for comment.
Frank Espinoza, a local spokesperson for AEP Texas, said that AEP no longer owns the power plant.
“It’s a very odd situation,” Espinoza said. “We sold all that property. We do have a small, small office there.”
Espinoza did confirm that there was an explosion at one of the AEP substations on Saturday afternoon. The substation is near the La Palma power plant property, according to Espinoza, and because it’s on the same piece of land people associated the explosion with the power plant. He said it was “equipment failure … inside the substation” that caused the explosion.
“Inside a substation, you have large pieces of equipment,” such as transformers, air circuit breakers and totalizers, Espinoza said, adding that a piece of equipment inside the substation failed and affected “a couple thousand” customers for roughly 15 to 20 minutes.
According to Operations Chief Raul Zuniga of the San Benito Fire Department, which responded to the fire, a transformer’s explosion within the substation was what people saw from the stadium on Saturday.
SBFD Captain Romeo Mancias Jr. said that in his 19 years, the transformers at that substation have not exploded.
“We responded, and the oil inside the transformer was still burning,” Mancias said.
From what firefighters were able to determine, the oil inside the transformer was ignited. It’s not clear if this was caused by a spark or some other malfunction.
For fires dealing with electrical components, such as this one, Mancias said, “We don’t use water. We use dry chemical … extinguisher.”
He said the fire was easily controlled and that there was minimal fire aside from the initial explosion.
“It was a small flame. That’s why it didn’t take very long to use the extinguisher,” Mancias said.
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