San Bernardino: Gasoline fuel tanker explosion

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

San Bernardino: Gasoline fuel tanker explosion

Fuel explosion causes lockdown, evacuations

SAN BERNARDINO - Authorities evacuated dozens of people, locked down an elementary school and doused flames in a tense battle to keep 2,500 gallons of diesel fuel from igniting at a gas station Wednesday.

The fire started at 8:45 a.m. after vapors from a fuel tanker exploded at the Merit Oil Company on the corner of Del Rosa Avenue and Pumalo Street.

Al Green, who has been driving eight years for Merit, happened to be standing on the side of the tanker when a fireball shot up into the air.

"If I had been up there, I would have been toasted," he said.

The explosion engulfed the tanker in flames and also burned a couch and several trees.

Green had just finished transferring 2,500 gallons of gasoline into an underground tank at the gas station when some vapor turned into a fireball.

"We're real fortunate that the explosion didn't happen in the middle of fueling," said San Bernardino fire Battalion Chief Mike Alder.

Despite the explosion and the fire to the fuel truck, the driver escaped with no injuries.

Forty firefighters rushed to the scene in four minutes and worked frantically to extinguish the blaze. Their worry was the additional 2,500 gallons of diesel fuel that remained in the truck's second tank.

Firefighters closed off a 500-foot area surrounding the gas station and evacuated about 40 residents from the area, said San Bernardino fire spokesman Steve Tracy.

Nearby Hunt Elementary School was placed on lockdown - meaning students were kept inside classrooms - while firefighters battled the blaze.

Firefighters sprayed water and foam onto the tanker, eventually putting out the flames. No fuel spilled from the truck.

"The biggest thing now is to figure out why it happened," Alder said.

Tatiyana Vollhardt, director of safety for Merit Oil Company, said there have been no explosions from fuel transfers in the company's history, which dates back to the 1950s.

That's a fact that had Green laughing nervously.

"Why me?" he asked.

Source: sbsun.com - Link

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Wednesday, January 14, 2009