Residents were returning to their homes Wednesday afternoon after a pipeline blast forced an evacuation in Cat Spring, near Sealy.

The explosion happened around 7 a.m., sending plumes of smoke and gas into the air.

The blast could be heard for miles.

"It shook the house. I didn’t know whether to get under the bed or run," Randy Panttila said. "You could hear the gas blowing out the ground."

Residents got emergency calls to evacuate, and some said they could actually see the smoke billowing over the town.

"It was an orange cloud, you could see the cloud," one resident said.

Other people living in surrounding areas were asked to shelter in place and avoid creating sparks.

Officials stopped the flow to the pipeline and eventually gave residents the OK to return, but they didn’t say what could have caused the blast.
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