DEER PARK, Texas – Anthony Zambrano sensed the trouble before most.
When a fire broke out at a chemical storage facility in Deer Park on Sunday, he made a very important 911 call.
“You could just see the smoke start coming up, and I’m like, 'Man, that’s not normal. That’s not normal at all,'” Zambrano said.
He said he was in the area Sunday morning when he got a bad feeling about the smoke he saw building above Deer Park.
“Coming from a facility like that, you know it wasn’t a good (thing),” Zambrano said.
He was one of the first people to call 911. Zambrano said he watched as the emergency crews sped down the highway.
“I was just glad somebody was going to check it out.”
He said he didn’t realized how extensive or intense the fire at the ITC storage facility would be.
“I thought they would contain it. I thought they would be able to stop it, but apparently not,” Zambrano said.
While the fire continued to burn 60 hours after his 911 call, Zambrano said he is glad that he went with his gut and made the call.
KPRC received a copy of the 911 call Zambrano made to Deer Park police.
In the 911 call he explained to dispatchers what he saw.
"I noticed the smoke coming up. That's on fire," Zambrano said.
According to the incident report from Deer Park Police, his call came in at 10:13 a.m.
Dispatch then tried to determine where the smoke was coming from.
According to the call slip, the first Deer Park crews dispatched to the scene arrived at 10:48 a.m.
On the recording, you can hear the dispatcher explaining help is on the way.
"We will send somebody to check it out because at this point, you are the only thing that is giving us an exact location," the dispatcher said.
According to a report Channel 2 obtained from ITC Deer Park, the storage facility sent out a notification about the fire at 10:21 a.m.
