LA PORTE, Texas (AP) — A massive pipeline fire in a Houston suburb spewed a huge plume of fire into the air for more than two hours Monday as emergency workers evacuated a surrounding neighborhood where some homes had caught fire.

The fire started at 9:55 a.m. with an explosion that rocked nearby homes in Deer Park and La Porte, about 25 miles southeast of downtown Houston, long the energy capital of the United States.

“All of a sudden we heard this loud bang and then I saw something bright, like orange, coming out of our back door outside,” said journeyman Melina Guerra, 25, a La Porte resident. She and her boyfriend live in a mobile home in the evacuation area. They were eating breakfast when they heard the explosion around 9:30 a.m. Guerra’s boyfriend, Jairo Sanchez, 26, 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. I thought maybe it was a plane that had crashed near our house,” Guerra said.

La Porte city spokesman Lee Woodward told KTRK-TV that it was not yet known what was flowing through the pipeline or how it would be shut off. People in nearby schools were told to evacuate while police cordoned off a large area.

It was not immediately clear which companies operate the affected infrastructure. At least one gas and one hazardous liquid pipeline run through the fire area, according to geographic data from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Another gas and liquid pipeline runs diagonally through a nearby residential area along Spencer Highway, which runs through the suburbs of Deer Park and La Porte.

The cause of the fire was initially unclear. Houston is the center of the country’s petrochemical industry and is home to a multitude of refineries, factories and thousands of miles of pipelines. Explosions and fires are a familiar sight for residents of Texas’ largest city, including some that have resulted in deaths. The explosions have repeatedly raised questions about the adequacy of the industry’s plans to protect the population and the impact of Environmental damage.

Video footage from KTRK showed a park near the fire had been damaged and firefighters were dumping water on nearby homes. By midday, at least a few homes appeared to have caught fire, with smoke billowing from their roofs. There were also several stores nearby, including a Walmart.

Sanchez said they were used to evacuations because they lived near other factories near the highway. But in the 10 years Sanchez has lived there, he has never experienced an explosion.

“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.

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

“Please avoid the area and follow police directions. Further details will be provided as they become available,” Woodward said.

There are several high-voltage power lines near the fire. The website PowerOutage.us said several thousand customers in Harris County were without power.

CenterPoint Energy said it is monitoring the fire near Spencer Highway in LaPorte. The company said the fire “is not related to the company’s natural gas operations or facilities.”

“We are also working with emergency responders. For safety reasons, the public should avoid this area until further notice from local disaster management authorities. As soon as it is safe to do so, our electrical crews will go to the area to assess the damage to our transmission and distribution lines, poles and equipment and restore service to affected customers as safely and quickly as possible.”

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AP reporter Christopher L. Keller contributed to this report from Albuquerque, New Mexico