“There was a mushroom cloud over Baton Rouge, or near Baton Rouge,” Rolfes said. “In these kinds of accidents, it’s always hard to get the information. That is part of the cloak of secrecy and the lack of transparency that big corporations like Dow benefit from.”
For advocates like Rolfes, this lack of transparency is nothing new. The region is littered with oil and gas and chemical plants. Rolfes said these types of accidents — and the spokespeople coming out afterward and saying nothing happened — have been happening for decades along the Mississippi River.
In April 2022, there was a large leak of toxic chlorine at the Olin Chemical plant, one of the Dow Chemical facility’s neighbors. That spill sent at least 39 people to the hospital with symptoms related to chlorine exposure, and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) later said the extent of the spill was underreported by Olin and Dow.
For Janecia Green, who also lives near the Dow plant, the reason for her skepticism is simple.
“It's a chemical plant. You can't trust them,” she said. “And I stay right here.”
Green and her two-year-old son were woken up by the sound of the recent blast. She and her neighbors received alerts to go back inside and shelter in place, which she did. The alert also said to turn off their fans and air conditioning to help keep out any potentially harmful chemicals that may have been released.
Like the rest of Louisiana, Plaquemine is in the midst of an unprecedented heat wave, and even though the explosion happened around 9:30 p.m., Smith said that her trailer quickly turned into a hotbox after she turned off her A/C.
“It was very uncomfortable,” she said. “It was very hot. Real hot.”
The heat made it difficult for her two-year-old son to get back to sleep, so Green stayed up with him for more than eight hours — until the all-clear was given.
Even after getting the alert that it was safe to turn back on their A/C, Tullier Trailer Park residents said they didn’t necessarily trust that there weren’t any chemicals in the air.
Smith said she could smell something “sweet,” which made her think there was antifreeze present in the air. Ethylene oxide does give off a sickly sweet, ether-like scent, but Dow officials stated there weren’t any harmful levels detected after the explosion.