A fireball lit up the sky across the Los Angeles area on Thursday night after an explosion at a Chevron refinery in El Segundo, alarming nearby residents who said it felt like an earthquake.
The explosion, shortly before 10 p.m. local time, produced a giant orange blaze that could be seen from miles away. More than two hours later, at least one fire still roared, though it had dimmed considerably. Large plumes of smoke billowed overhead.
The cause of the explosion was not clear, and the city of El Segundo was working with Chevron to investigate, said Mayor Chris Pimentel. He said that all the workers were accounted for at the plant and that there were no injuries.
“All refinery personnel and contractors have been accounted for,” Kevin Slagle, a Chevron spokesman, said in a statement. He added that there were no evacuation orders in place.
Ed Wolfman, 72, a retiree in nearby Manhattan Beach, said his family was at home having dinner, breaking their fast at the end of Yom Kippur, “when we heard this boom and the house just shook.”
“We thought it was an earthquake, and we held our breath, waiting for an aftershock,” he said.
Moments later, he said, the son of one of his guests called to say that smoke was billowing into their house, less than a mile from the refinery.
Holly Mitchell, the Los Angeles County Supervisor who represents the area around the refinery, said the fire was quickly contained within a small section of the facility. “It stayed well within the property lines,” she said, adding that as of early Friday, sensors had not indicated any serious air quality issues.
Aerial footage captured crews battling blazes across the 1,000-acre facility. People could be seen in videos running from a nearby golfing facility to drive away.
The police blocked off streets in El Segundo, a beachside city with a heavy industrial presence just south of Los Angeles International Airport. An airport spokesman said flights were not affected. Fire trucks were parked nearby.
There were no evacuation orders in any nearby communities. Manhattan Beach issued a shelter in place order for some residents.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles said they had been briefed on the fire.
The facility at El Segundo, home to California’s oil and aerospace industries, was California’s second oil refinery when it opened in 1911. The El Segundo plant is California’s second-biggest oil refinery, according to state records.
The refinery, Ms. Mitchell pointed out, is a longstanding fixture in the South Bay, and the cities around it “are kind of used to flares and burnoffs.”
“I’ll be interested it hear in coming days where there are any issues with air quality, but this is certainly not what it could have been,” she said.