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DEER PARK, Texas (AP) — A flame that towered over a southeast Houston suburb subsided Tuesday but was still burning following a pipeline explosion that happened when a vehicle drove through a Walmart parking lot fence and struck an above-ground valve, officials said.

“Progress has been made as first responder crews worked through the night. The fire is significantly smaller,” according to a statement from Deer Park. The city said Energy Transfer, the Dallas-based owner of the pipeline, expects the fire to burn itself out later Tuesday.

City officials said police and FBI agents found no preliminary evidence to suggest a coordinated or terrorist attack, and said it “appears to be an isolated incident,” but they haven’t offered any details on how they came to that conclusion.

Investigators were trying to learn more about the driver of the vehicle. The car was incinerated by the explosion, which scorched the ground across a wide radius, severed nearby power transmission lines, melted playground equipment and ignited nearby homes. Over 24 hours after the explosion, the driver still had not been publicly identified.

The valve, which appears to have been protected by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, is located within a long grassy corridor where high-voltage power lines run. Below the ground is a network of pipelines. On one side of the corridor is a neighborhood of homes; on the other is a Walmart. Officials say the driver went through a fence alongside the Walmart parking lot and across the grassy right-of-way before striking the valve.

Officials have not given any information on the condition of the driver. Deer Park spokesperson Kaitlyn Bluejacket said four people were injured, but provided no details about the seriousness of the injuries. Authorities said one firefighter sustained minor injuries.

The roaring fire shot orange flame and then black smoke hundreds of feet into the air, prompting authorities to evacuate nearly 1,000 homes and order people in nearby schools to shelter in place. By Tuesday, the City of La Porte said it slightly reduced the evacuation area south of the fire, but did not say how many people were affected.

Operators shut off the flow of natural gas liquids after the explosion rattled homes and businesses in Deer Park and the adjacent suburb of La Porte shortly before 10 a.m. on Monday. But Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said 20 miles (32 kilometers) of pipeline stretched between the two closed valves, and all the chemicals inside had to burn off before the fire would stop.

The fire was burning so hot that all firefighters could do is use ladder trucks to hose down nearby houses that began smoking in the radiant heat.

Houston, Texas’ largest city, is the nation’s petrochemical heartland and is home to a cluster of refineries and plants and thousands of miles of pipelines. Explosions and fires are a familiar sight, and some have been deadly, raising recurring questions about industry efforts to protect the public and the environment.

Anna Lewis, who was walking into the nearby Walmart when the explosion happened, said it sounded “like a bomb went off.” She said everyone inside was rushed to the back of the store and then taken across the street to a grocery store before being bussed to a community center.

“It scared me,” she said. “You really don’t know what to do when it’s happening.”

Geselle Melina Guerra said she and her boyfriend heard the explosion as they were having breakfast in their mobile home.

“All of a sudden we hear this loud bang and then I see something bright, like orange, coming from our back door that’s outside,” said Guerra, who lives within the evacuation area.

Both Energy Transfer and Harris County Pollution Control are conducting air monitoring in the area and have found no health issues, according to Bluejacket, the Deer Park spokesperson.

The Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates oil and gas in the state, said its safety inspectors are investigating.

BEXAR COUNTY (AP) – A Texas district court judge on Monday denied a request by Attorney General Ken Paxton to block a Bexar County plan to mail voter registration forms to county residents ahead of the November election, saying the request was moot.

Bexar County attorneys argued in a hearing before Judge Antonia Arteaga on Monday that there was no reason for the court to issue an injunction because the forms were mailed last week, according to the San Antonio Report. Paxton’s office submitted an updated request before the hearing asking that no additional letters be sent out.

“The target of the mailing — qualified individuals who recently moved to or within Bexar County — have received those forms, and perhaps have already returned them,” said Bexar County Assistant Criminal District Attorney Robert W. Piatt III.

Ryan Kercher, deputy chief of the special litigation division in the attorney general’s office, argued that the plan could result in ineligible people registering to vote. Paxton appealed the decision on Monday evening, claiming Bexar officials “expedited” the mail out to take place before the hearing.

Voter registration applications are returned to county offices and are reviewed to confirm eligibility.

Here’s what you need to know.

The background: Bexar County officials voted on Sept. 3 to mail voter registration forms to eligible county residents, defying a threat by Paxton to “use all available legal means” to shut down the program. The Bexar County Commissioners Court voted 3-1 to approve the $393,000 outreach contract with Civic Government Solutions, an outside firm.

Paxton sued Bexar County officials in state district court on Sept. 4, seeking an emergency order to block the program. But his office later did not show up at court to request the order, according to News 4 San Antonio.

The lawsuit is part of an ongoing feud between the state’s Republican leaders and Texas’ largest counties, which are run by Democrats, over initiatives to proactively send registration applications to people who are eligible but unregistered to vote. Harris County leaders weighed a similar plan but ultimately did not follow through.

Paxton warned Harris and Bexar counties, which include Houston and San Antonio respectively, against such efforts on Sept. 2, claiming they would run afoul of state law and risk adding noncitizens to the voter rolls. Paxton separately sued Travis County, which includes Austin, for a similar issue.

Why Texas sued: In its lawsuit, Texas argued that counties do not have the authority to send out unsolicited voter registration applications and that Bexar County officials failed to go through a competitive bidding process before awarding the contract.

Local Republican activists slammed the Bexar County deal as an illegal waste of taxpayer money that would disproportionately register Democratic voters, citing past comments from the contracted firm’s leaders indicating support for Democratic candidates.

In a letter to Bexar county officials, Paxton added that the outreach proposal was “particularly troubling this election cycle” because of the uptick in illegal border crossings under President Joe Biden, whose policies he said have “saddled Texas” with “ballooning noncitizen populations.”

Paxton, without evidence, has routinely accused Democrats of adopting more liberal immigration policies to draw on noncitizen votes to win elections. He falsely told conservative talk show host Glenn Beck in August that Democrats’ plan was to “tell the cartels, ‘Get people here as fast as possible, as many as possible.’”

Only U.S. citizens are permitted to vote under both federal and state law, and data shows that instances of noncitizen voting are exceedingly rare.

What Bexar County says: Democratic commissioners, backed by a county legal official, called Paxton’s legal threats misleading and unfounded.

Civic Government Solutions’ chief executive, Jeremy Smith, said that the outreach efforts would be strictly nonpartisan — as required by the contract — and pose little risk of registering noncitizens.

He said that the company uses a mix of public records and county data to identify people who could have recently moved and are unregistered, and he noted the checks in place to prevent noncitizens from registering to vote.

When voter registrars receive applications, they send them to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, where they are checked for eligibility against Department of Public Safety and Social Security Administration data. In addition, local voter registrars work with their county district attorney’s office to check citizenship status using responses from jury summons questionnaires.

Broader impact: The lawsuit was the latest in a series of moves by Republican leaders in Texas who say they are trying to keep the state’s election systems and voter rolls secure ahead of the highly charged November elections.

Gov. Greg Abbott announced in late August that Texas officials had removed roughly 1 million people from its voter rolls since 2021 — though election experts noted that such maintenance is a routine part of complying with state and federal law, and warned that Abbott’s framing of the action could be used to undermine trust in elections.

Abbott’s office said the names scrapped from the voter rolls included more than 6,500 noncitizens who shouldn’t have been registered, and about 1,930 of those had a voting history. Voter watchdog and voting rights groups have questioned the figure, noting that Texas has incorrectly flagged people as noncitizens in the past.

Paxton’s office also recently conducted a series of raids as part of an investigation into alleged vote harvesting in Frio, Atascosa and Bexar counties, a move the League of United Latin American Citizens cast as an effort to “suppress the Latino vote through intimidation.” In addition, Paxton has probed what appear to be unsubstantiated claims that migrants were registering to vote outside a state drivers license facility west of Fort Worth.

A group of Democratic state lawmakers asked the Justice Department last week to investigate the recent spate of election-related actions, saying they were “sowing fear and will suppress voting” among communities of color. On Sept. 4, five Democrats from Texas’ congressional delegation joined the chorus of calls for federal action — among them U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia of Houston, who argued for “a swift and thorough investigation.”

AMARILLO – The Amarillo Tribune reports that on Aug. 26, Governor Greg Abbott issued a press release announcing that since signing Senate Bill 1 into law in 2021, Texas has removed over one million people from the state’s voter rolls. For many Texan voters, the release created confusion and caused concern over their voter status. “It did cause a lot of panic for a lot of people,” Randall County Elections Administrator Shannon Lackey said. “We have had many, many people call to verify their status. What everyone needs to know was all of those things on that list happen on a daily basis.” In a Potter County Elections Administration press release, Potter County Elections Administrator Christy Benge explained, “The largest category of voter registration cancellations come from voters who are deceased, voters who give a signed statement affirming they no longer reside within Potter County, and voters who have a felony conviction,” with few other minor categories with very small numbers.

Lackey said that county elections officials constantly maintain their voter rolls, canceling the status of those who have died, moved away, or are noncitizens. But, she explained, election staff attempts to notify voters of their status so it can be maintained. For example, Lackey said that if someone gets a jury summons and responds that they no longer live there, the district clerk must notify the elections staff of the response. At that point, they go on the suspense list. “The suspense was another category that was listed on that report that came out,” Lackey said. “All that means is we think maybe you’ve moved or you no longer have that same mailing address. That does not cancel [your registration status.] We send out an address confirmation notice to that voter at whatever address we have available to us.” Lackey said if the voter does not respond, they stay on the suspense list for two federal election cycles or four years, and if they don’t vote or update, they fall off the voter rolls. “But that’s not done until the end of November of even years, okay?” Lackey said. “So, we don’t have mass cancellation before a general election.”

DALLAS – The Dallas Morning News reports Texas voters think there is a “retirement crisis” and their post-work accounts are underfunded, according to new study from asset management giant BlackRock, even though the issue hasn’t drawn the same attention in national and state elections as other hot-button issues. The study is part of what company founder and CEO Larry Fink called “rethinking retirement” in his 2024 annual chairman’s letter to investors. In his letter, Fink wrote that the retirement crisis requires a substantial response from the U.S. government. “America needs an organized, high-level effort to ensure that future generations can live out their final years with dignity,” he wrote.

The new study, which surveyed 500 registered voters in Texas, seems to point toward Texan voters being in broad agreement with Fink. One of the most eye-catching figures: 91% of Texas voters think there is a retirement savings crisis in America. The survey results come two months ahead of a pivotal national election where the economy and inflation are expected to be key issues among voters, but social security and retirement savings policies have been overshadowed by abortion, immigration, foreign policy and tax priorities. Texans are slightly more concerned about a retirement crisis than the country as a whole, of which 90% said there is such an issue. Once you take that into account, the rest of the figures in the study are no surprise. More than 70% of registered Texas voters are concerned about having enough in savings or investments to fund their needs in retirement. A similar percentage are concerned about maintaining their standard of living or being able to afford long-term costs like nursing homes once they retire. Nationally, voters estimate it will take about $2.2 million to retire, but 62% of registered voters in Texas surveyed report they have less than $150,000 in retirement savings. All told, less than a quarter (24%) of registered Texas voters expressed a high level of confidence that they have enough to live throughout their retirement years. That’s a lower percentage than the 32% who reported they have no retirement savings at all.

AUSTIN – The Houston Chronicle reports the University of Texas plans to automatically admit students in the top 5% in their graduating class who apply to attend the school as undergraduates in fall 2026 — the lowest rate in the school’s history. UT President Jay Hartzell announced during a Faculty Council meeting Monday that the university would be changing its automatic admissions rate percentage, according to the Austin American-Statesman. The school has automatically admitted students in the top 6% of their graduating class as undergraduates since fall 2019, when it raised the bar from 7%. Under state law, Texas public universities are required to admit students who graduate in the top 10% of their class at any Texas high school. However, as the number of graduates and applications continued to grow, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 175 in 2009 allowing UT to accept a lower percentage of students compared to other universities due to capacity concerns starting in 2011.

UT is legally required to admit 90 percent of its first-year students from in-state residents, including 75% of whom are automatically admitted. The remaining in-state students, along with transfer and out-of-state students, are admitted through a holistic review process, which includes class rank, test scores, essays and special accomplishments. The change comes after the university reported a record number of applications, enrolled freshmen and overall enrollment during the 2023-24 school year. According to the school, 66,109 students applied to attend UT, 9,385 first-time, first-year undergraduate students enrolled, and total enrollment reached 53,082 students. UT said it is “committed to continuing to provide world-class classroom and research experiences for our students, even while we are facing record demand.” The demand has been driven “both by the success and growth of Texas, and by greater interest in UT among the state’s best high-school students,” according to the school. “We see no signs that our demand will substantially fall, and revising our auto-admit percentage to 5% will allow us to continue to meet the state’s requirement that 75% of the Texas residents in each freshman class are admitted based on high-school class rank,” the university said in a statement.

DEER PARK (AP) — A flame that towered over a southeast Houston suburb had subsided Tuesday, but continued to burn following a massive pipeline explosion after a vehicle drove through a fence and struck an above-ground valve, officials said.

“Progress has been made as first responder crews worked through the night. The fire is significantly smaller,” according to a statement from the city of Deer Park.

City officials have said investigations by police and local FBI agents have found no preliminary reports that would suggest a coordinated or “terrorist” attack and that “this appears to be an isolated incident.”

The investigation included efforts to learn more about the driver of a vehicle that was incinerated by the pipeline explosion as flames scorched the ground across a wide radius, severed adjacent power transmission lines and ignited homes at a distance.

Police did not provide any information about the person’s condition.

An evacuation area included nearly 1,000 homes and initial shelter orders included schools.

The City of La Porte said it has slightly reduced the evacuation area south of the pipeline fire, but did not say how many people were affected.

Operators shut off the flow of natural gas liquids in the pipeline, but so much remained in the miles of tubing that firefighters could do nothing but watch and hose down adjacent homes.

The statement by Deer Park said Energy Transfer, the Dallas-based owner of the pipeline, expects the fire to burn itself out later Tuesday.

Deer Park Mayor Jerry Mouton Jr. described intense heat from the fire that has continued burning for nearly 24 hours as ladder trucks showered houses from above.

Firefighters initially were dispatched Monday morning, after an explosion at a valve station in Deer Park, adjacent to La Porte, rattled homes and businesses, including a Walmart. Deer Park officials said an SUV drove into the valve after going through a fence on the side of the Walmart parking lot.

Deer Park spokesperson Kaitlyn Bluejacket has said four people were injured. She didn’t provide details about the severity of the injuries.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said in a statement that 20 miles (32 kilometers) of pipeline between the two closed valves had to burn off before the fire would stop.

Anna Lewis, who was walking into the nearby Walmart when the explosion happened, said it sounded “like a bomb went off.” She said everyone inside was rushed to the back of the store and then taken across the street to a grocery store before being bussed to a community center.

“It scared me,” she said. “You really don’t know what to do when it’s happening.”

Geselle Melina Guerra said she and her boyfriend heard the explosion as they were having breakfast in their mobile home.

“All of a sudden we hear this loud bang and then I see something bright, like orange, coming from our back door that’s outside,” said Guerra, who lives within the evacuation area.

Houston, Texas’ largest city, is the nation’s petrochemical heartland and is home to a cluster of refineries and plants and thousands of miles of pipelines. Explosions and fires are a familiar sight in the area, including some that have been deadly, raising recurring questions about the adequacy of industry efforts to protect the public and the environment.

Both Energy Transfer and Harris County Pollution Control are conducting air monitoring in the area and have found no health issues, according to Bluejacket, the Deer Park spokesperson, from the towering plume of fire and smoke that could be seen from at least 10 miles (16 kilometers) away at one point.

The Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates oil and gas in the state, said its safety inspectors were investigating.

LA PORTE, Texas (AP) — A massive pipeline fire sent a pillar of flame towering over some Houston suburbs on Monday as first responders evacuated a surrounding neighborhood and tried to keep more nearby homes from catching on fire.

The blaze involving a 20-inch pipeline carrying natural gas liquids must burn itself out, according to its operator, Dallas-based Energy Transfer. The company said the flow was shut off but local officials said it could take hours, if not into Tuesday, for the residual material to burn off.

Local authorities would not speculate at an afternoon news conference about what caused the fire and what role a burned car near the source of the flame may have had. Energy Transfer said in its statement that it was “aware of early reports” that a car had struck some valve equipment but did not offer more details, including the origin of those reports.

Firefighters were dispatched at 9:55 a.m. after an explosion that rattled adjacent homes and businesses in Deer Park and La Porte, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of downtown Houston, long the energy capital of the U.S. The plume of smoke could be seen from at least 10 miles away.

The only injury reported so far was to a firefighter who sustained a minor injury, officials said.

Geselle Melina Guerra said she and her boyfriend heard an explosion at around 9:30 a.m. as they were having breakfast in their mobile home. “All of a sudden we hear this loud bang and then I see something bright, like orange, coming from our back door that’s outside,” said Guerra, 25, who lives within the evacuation area.

Her boyfriend woke up his brother and they ran to their car.

“I was just freaking out, pacing around the living room, not really knowing what to do or what was happening,” Guerra said. “I thought maybe it was an airplane that had crashed down by our house.”

La Porte city spokesperson Lee Woodward told KTRK-TV that people in nearby schools were told to shelter in place as law enforcement blocked off a wide area.

Energy Transfer said in a statement that air monitoring equipment was being set up in the area.

At nearby San Jacinto College, which closed its campus after the explosion, people who gathered included Evan Wyman, who had gotten word after calling police that her dog, Baxter, and had been rescued from her home, which is in the evacuated neighborhood.

“I just know that my dog is rescued,” Wyman said.

Houston is the nation’s petrochemical heartland and is home to a cluster of refineries, plants and thousands of miles of pipelines. Explosions and fires are a familiar sight to residents in Texas’ largest city, including some that have been deadly. The blasts have raised recurring questions about the adequacy of the industry’s plans to protect the public and the impacts of environmental damage.

Video images from KTRK showed a park near the fire had been damaged and firefighters pouring water on adjacent homes. By noon, at least a couple of homes appeared to have caught fire, with smoke pouring from their roofs. There are also several businesses nearby, including a Walmart.

Sanchez said they’re used to evacuations because they live close to other plants near the highway, but he hadn’t seen an explosion before in his 10 years living there.

“We just drove as far as we could because we didn’t know what was happening,” Sanchez said from a parked car at a gas station near his college.

Officials have ordered residents in the Brookglen neighborhood area near the fire to evacuate, Woodward said in an email.

“Please avoid the area and follow law enforcement direction. Further details will be released as available,” Woodward said.

The fire burned through high voltage power lines, and the website PowerOutage.us said several thousand customers were without power in Harris County.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The former Uvalde, Texas, schools police chief made his first court appearance on Monday for his role in the heavily scrutinized law enforcement response to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting.

Pete Arredondo, who was allegedly the incident commander, was part of the slow police response that left 19 students and two teachers dead.

Attorneys for Arredondo filed a motion to dismiss the charges, arguing that the former chief should not be held responsible for the actions he didn’t take that day. The judge did not make a ruling on the motion Monday.

A grand jury indicted Arredondo, as well as responding officer Adrian Gonzales, on multiple counts of child endangerment and abandonment earlier this year. Both have pleaded not guilty.

The indictment alleges that Arredondo did not follow his active shooter training and made critical decisions that slowed the police response while the gunman was “hunting” victims.

Arredondo has said he’s been “ scapegoated ” for his role in the law enforcement response and should not have been considered the lead commander.

Nearly 400 officers from federal, state and local agencies waited more than 70 minutes before confronting the gunman at Robb Elementary. Multiple state and federal investigations have pointed to failures in communication, leadership and training for law enforcement’s response.

A federal review from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Professional Responsibility released Thursday found similar breakdowns in communication and command among Border Patrol agents.

The former schools police chief and Gonzalez, who was indicted on 29 similar counts of endangerment and abandonment, are the only two officers facing criminal charges. If convicted, they can serve up to two years in jail time.