Here are things to know for Thursday, Dec. 23:
1. 4 people injured in fire at ExxonMobil Baytown Complex, officials say
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Officials are investigating after four people were injured in a fire at the ExxonMobil Baytown Complex Thursday.
The blaze broke out around 1 a.m. at the refinery located in the 5000 block of Baytown Drive.
Residents in the area told KPRC 2 they heard a loud “boom” when the incident occurred.
2. Man charged after wounding trespasser at southeast Houston washateria, police say
A washateria employee is charged for firing gunshots at a trespasser inside of a southeast Houston washateria Tuesday afternoon.
Robert M. Le, 31, an employee of the Fuqua Washateria located at the 11000 block of Fuqua Street, was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Police said Corey Laine, 25, was reportedly trespassing at the washateria. When Le tried to ask Laine to leave, Laine ran and allegedly knocked over Le’s mother, who suffered a minor injury, according to police.
3. Pause on student loan payments is extended through May 1
The Biden administration on Wednesday extended a student loan moratorium that has allowed tens of millions of Americans to put off debt payments during the pandemic.
Under the action, payments on federal student loans will remain paused through May 1. Interest rates will remain at 0% during that period, and debt collection efforts will be suspended. Those measures have been in place since early in the pandemic, but were set to expire Jan. 31.
President Joe Biden said financial recovery from the pandemic will take longer than job recovery, especially for those with student loans.
“We know that millions of student loan borrowers are still coping with the impacts of the pandemic and need some more time before resuming payments,” he said in a statement, adding it was an issue he and the vice president “both care deeply about.”
4. Texas has the highest share of uninsured residents in the nation. Another COVID-19 wave puts them at risk.
So much of the last two years has felt surreal for the staff at Centro De Salud Familiar La Fe, a federally qualified health center in El Paso. Seemingly overnight, the women’s health center became a coronavirus unit. They began offering COVID-19 testing, and then, as soon as they could, vaccine pop-ups. They’ve made public service announcements and gone door to door, encouraging people to get vaccinated.
But despite the unprecedented nature of the pandemic, some things did not come as a surprise — like how hard it hit their low-income and uninsured clients.
“This area has been hurting for a long time,” spokesperson Estela Reyes-López said. “We do not get the funding that we need. We don’t have the medical providers that we need. … The situation with the coronavirus just exacerbated things that were already happening.”
5. Holiday warning: Traveler says vehicle was stolen from IAH garage
Terminal C’s high-tech fleet of roving security robots was unable to foil an auto theft last Sunday from George Bush Intercontinental Airport’s Terminal C garage.
“When we got off the elevator, three of those robots were there charging at the charging station,” Kelle Daigle, the latest auto theft victim, said.
Daigle’s 2019 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT was last tracked near a dead-end road before the GPS equipment was apparently removed from the vehicle.
“The guys told us they do have a lot of vehicles that have been stolen out of there,” Daigle said.
The Houston Police Department said vehicle break-ins are more common than outright vehicle thefts.