HOUSTON – After the pipeline fire in Deer Park, questions have been raised regarding the secureness of the pipeline area.

The fire was started after a vehicle came through a chain link fence, hitting a valve and sparking the blaze from the natural gas pipeline.

The Vice President for Energy and Innovation at the University of Houston, Ramanan Krishnamoorti, explains the challenges of keeping these facilities and equipment secure and what goes into it.

“Finding ways to secure all of these completely is a challenge and really understanding all the different sources of compromise are issues that we want to be able to assess,” he said. “One of the issues with many of these infrastructure is we need ready access to this for a variety of purposes. One is for maintenance and operation, one is for emergency service.”

Krishnamoorti said the Deer Park incident was a surprising one.

“This is a significant incident that perhaps we had not really truly contemplated, that there would be somebody whose vehicle would go through several sort of barriers and get to the point where it can go and impact a chain link fence and break it and then go hit the belt like, there are many other places it could have been if it got hit and gotten stalled out,” he said. “It is certainly something that we need to start accounting for. I think there are perhaps a few more barriers that could be put in place.”

Krishnamoorti said companies do risk analysis to determine how to engineer things to keep them as safe as possible, although it is never foolproof.

“You can never make anything 100% safe. What you try to do is do a risk analysis and you come back and say, what are the probability of of an event happening? What is the risk associated? And then put in countermeasures that prevent that give us the best economic result with the safety result that we’ve got in mind,” he said.

DEER PARK, Texas – A large pipeline fire has caused concern for many residents in the area, including what is emitting into the air.

According to the Deer Park Police Department, it is a natural gas.

The pipeline, owned by Energy Transfer, is burning a chemical called Y Grade NGL.

PHOTOS: Sky 2 aerials show large pipeline fire in Deer Park

According to Energy Rogue, Y Grade is a term used to refer to a specific product resulting from the natural gas processing process. It is the combination of various natural gas liquids (NGLs) that are separated from the natural gas stream.

The pipeline fire happened at 9:55 a.m., prompting evacuations, shelter-in-place and road closures.

Follow latest updates about the incident here.

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Energy Transfer released the following statement:

We experienced an incident this morning in La Porte, Texas, at a valve station along Spencer Highway for a 20″ natural gas liquids line that resulted in a fire. There are no reports of injuries at this time. The LaPorte Fire Department is on the scene and has evacuated all homes and businesses within a half mile of the incident site. The line has been isolated so that the residual product in the line can safely burn itself out. We have no timeline at this point on how long that process will take, but we are working closely with local authorities.  We are aware of early reports indicating that an unknown passenger car entered our right-of-way and struck the valve location. Air monitoring equipment is in the process of being set up in the area. We will continue to release details as they become available.

The Railroad Commission of Texas released the following statement:

Railroad Commission of Texas pipeline safety inspectors are investigating the fire that occurred at an Energy Transfer natural gas liquid pipeline in La Porte Monday morning. Energy Transfer has shut down the portion of the pipeline that caught fire. RRC inspectors will work with state and local emergency responders at the scene.

The fire occurred in a pipeline corridor, and the RRC is notifying other pipeline operators in the corridor of the incident and getting information on measures they are taking to ensure safety of their systems.