Nine Los Angeles County firefighters were injured Thursday morning while trying to extinguish a semi-truck with pressurized natural gas tanks that caught fire in Wilmington, authorities said.
Fire crews responded to the blaze just before 7 a.m. at 1120 N. Alameda St., near the Marathon Los Angeles Refinery in Wilmington, according to the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
At the scene, they found a semi-truck on fire that contained two 100-gallon compressed natural gas cylinders on it.
Several firefighters were working to put out the flames when one of two tanks exploded minutes later, authorities said.
Video captured on a neighbor’s camera shows a plume of white smoke rising in the sky and then a large fireball erupts.
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Nine firefighters were injured in the blast, with two suffering critical injuries, and eight of them were taken to the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, authorities said. The other firefighter was airlifted to a burn center in Los Angeles. The other firefighters suffered injuries ranging from moderate to minor, authorities said.
Fire officials said the cause of the fire is still under investigation. The driver of the semi-truck was not injured and is cooperating with investigators, Capt. Erik Scott told reporters during a press conference outside the hospital.
Bernix Aguilar, who lives a few hundred yards from where the explosion occurred, said he was making coffee when he heard a blast and felt his house jump off its foundation before slamming back down, causing cracks in his floor and walls.
“Si fue honestamente como que algo había explotado por debajo de la casa,” Aguilar told the Post. “It was honestly as if something had exploded right under my house.”
When Aguilar and his neighbors ran outside to see what caused the noise, they saw metal parts raining from the sky, some of which landed on homes, he said.
More than 150 firefighters went to the scene of the explosion to help fight fires and provide medical care and hazardous materials cleanup, authorities said.
It’s not yet clear how the fire began. The blast sent a large plume of smoke up in the air, and its force caused a nearby electrical transformer to explode, according to fire officials.
Typically, semi-trucks operate with diesel, but this one was running on compressed gas, fire officials said.
A 500-foot perimeter has been set up around the location of the blast, and police are asking residents to stay inside their homes until further notice.
Authorities said no homes are within what they consider the danger zone and no formal evacuations have been ordered at this time.
Janice Hahn, who represents Los Angeles Fourth District, which includes Wilmington, said that her thoughts were the injured firefighters, their families and the county fire department.
“I have no doubt our LA County doctors and nurses are doing everything they can to save their lives,” Hahn said in a statement. “I have represented Wilmington for decades now and I know that with the truck traffic in that area, a tragedy like this one is something the community has worried about for a long time.”
City News Service contributed to this report.
This is a breaking news story. It will be updated.