Four workers had minor injuries Wednesday after a large explosion at an ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance that left ash cascading to the ground and South Bay residents briefly wondering if an earthquake had hit, reports KTLA 5.
The blast at the refinery occurred around 8:50 a.m.
It caused a small fire on the ground that was quickly extinguished by some four dozen firefighters from Torrance and neighboring beach cities. Meanwhile, the refinery’s flare system sent flames shooting hundreds of feet into the air as a safety measure, Torrance Fire Department Capt. Steve Deuel said.
“有一个激活的寡糖r flare system, which is a safety feature where you see a large column of black smoke, big flame in the sky. It’s like a safety valve,” Deuel said. “They typically will take the product that’s involved … and route it up the stack and burn it off.”
The shaking produced by the explosion was equivalent to a magnitude-1.7 earthquake, a measurement taken by a nearby seismometer showed, according to geophysicist Egill Hauksson of Caltech. The impact was felt only the immediate vicinity, he said.
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