When the most powerful rocket ever built fired from its launchpad in Boca Chica, Texas, on Thursday, the launch shook the earth to its foundations and sent a billowing cloud of dust and debris, shaking houses and raining down brown dirt for miles.
In Port Isabel, a town about six miles northwest where at least one window was shattered, residents were alarmed.
“It was really terrifying,” says Sharon Almaguer, who was home with her 80-year-old mother at the time of the launch. During previous launches, Ms. Almaguer said she had experienced some tremors in the brick house, but “this was on a whole other level.”
Meanwhile, SpaceX’s spaceship exploded minutes after launch and before reaching orbit. Near the launch site, residents of Port Isabel, known for its towering lighthouse and less than 10 miles from the border with Mexico, had to clean up the mess.
Pretty much everywhere in the city “ended up with a covering of a pretty thick, gritty grain of sand that just landed on everything,” Valerie Bates, a spokeswoman for Port Isabel, said in an interview.
Images posted to social media showed residents’ cars covered in brown debris.
According to the owner, Luis Alanis, a window in a gym was broken. Mr Alanis, who was at home at the time of the launch, said he felt “rumbling”, sort of like a mini-earthquake. He estimated the window would cost about $300 to repair.
Closer to the launch site, large pieces of rubble were recorded flying through the air and crashing into an empty car.
Louis Balderas, the founder of LabPadre, which films SpaceX’s launches, said that while it was common to see some debris, smoke and dust, the impact of Thursday’s launch was unlike anything he had ever seen.
“There were bowling ball-sized chunks of concrete flying out of the launch pad,” Balderas said. The blast, he added, had created a crater that he estimated was about 7.5 meters deep.
In a statement posted on Facebook, the City of Port Isabel said the Cameron County Emergency Management Department confirmed the dust was “sand and soil from near the SpaceX launch site that was flung into the air by the force of the launch.”
On Thursday, Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr. ordered the closure of Boca Chica Beach and part of State Highway 4 until 2 p.m. Friday “for the purpose of protecting public health and safety while clearing anomaly.”
Ms Bates, Port Isabel’s spokeswoman, said there was no “immediate concern for people’s health” based on current information.
Eric Roesch, an environmental compliance and risk assessment expert who has monitored SpaceX’s rocket launches, said in an interview that he and others had long warned of the environmental risks to the surrounding region. But without a chemical analysis of the dust and debris, he added, it was hard to tell whether or not they were harmful to human health.
But, said Mr. Roesch, “the presence of that dust indicates to me that the impact modeling was inadequate because it wasn’t really revealed as a potential impact.”
In June, an environmental assessment by the Federal Aviation Administration concluded that SpaceX’s plans for orbital launches would have “no significant impact” on the Gulf Coast region.
Mr Roesch, who runs the environmental policy blog ESG Hound, said he thought the dust and debris came largely from a giant crater formed during the rocket’s launch. Typically, large launch sites are designed with a trench or water system that helps direct the rocket’s flame away from the ground and dampen the impact, he said.
“They didn’t,” he said. “Looks like they just went ahead and just launched this thing.”
The FAA said in a statement Friday that Space X’s “anomaly response plan” had been activated.
In the plan outlined, SpaceX is responsible for evaluating the situation and informing the right authorities.
If an event causes debris in the area where the rocket lifted off, the plan says the company would need to get a special emergency use permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and access to the area may be restricted.
The FAA said SpaceX is obligated to ensure “any ground safety and flight hazards do not pose an unacceptable risk to the public during licensed operations.”
SpaceX did not respond to questions about the dust and debris Thursday evening.
Ms. Almaguer, a resident of Port Isabel, said while Elon Musk’s venture had brought jobs to an economically distressed region, the brown mud that covered her town was a reminder of the environmental drawbacks and a sign that things could be off. had gone hand in hand.
“The locals are just being sacrificed here,” she said.
“He just wanted to get this thing up and running,” Ms. Almaguer said of Mr. Musk. “Everyone is more or less doomed.”
McKenna Oxenden reporting contributed.
