Seven missing after massive explosion at California fireworks warehouse
A warehouse storing fireworks in Northern California exploded on Tuesday, leaving seven people missing and two injured as explosions continued into Wednesday evening, officials said.
Dramatic video footage captured by KCRA 3 News, a Sacramento broadcaster, showed smoke pouring from the building’s roof before a massive explosion created a fireball that seemed to engulf much of the warehouse, accompanied by an echoing boom. Hundreds of fireworks appeared to be going off and were sparkling within the smoke. Photos of the aftermath showed multiple destroyed buildings and a large area covered in gray ash.
Fireworks earmarked for a local Fourth of July celebration this week were destroyed in the blast, according to a statement shared by a supervisor for nearby Yuba County.
The cause of the eruption is not yet known. The Cal Fire Office of the State Fire Marshal is leading an investigation, it said in a Wednesday news release.
The warehouse is near Esparto, a town of less than 4,000 people about 30 miles west of Sacramento. The explosion caused a fire that started about 6 p.m. Tuesday prompting evacuation orders and road closures around the facility that were still in place on Wednesday night, according to Cal Fire.
After the incident, Devastating Pyrotechnics, the San Francisco and Esparto-headquartered fireworks company, replaced its website homepage with a statement expressing condolences. “Our hearts and thoughts are with those we lost, their families, and everyone impacted in our community,” it said, adding that the company will cooperate with investigations.
Curtis Lawrence, fire chief for Esparto Fire Protection District, said at a Wednesday news conference that he has “not seen anything like this. This is obviously an incident of great magnitude.”
Authorities were alerted to the incident about 5:50 p.m. on Tuesday and arrived to find spot fires in the area surrounding the warehouse after “numerous explosions,” he said. The risk remained high, he added, with reports of large pieces of debris ejected across a wide area surrounding the property. Nearby residents who had been evacuated could not yet return to their homes and about 158 customers were without power.
Cal Fire believes the owner of the property is an active pyrotechnics license holder and “we will be working to determine that everything happening at the facility was within our license requirements,” its Wednesday statement said. A national response team with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has also been called to assist the investigation.
Jason Clay, a spokesperson for Cal Fire’s Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit, said at the Wednesday news conference that teams had not yet been able to enter and search the scene, and were undertaking aerial reconnaissance until it becomes safe to have first responders on-site.
Devastating Pyrotechnics produces firework displays in the San Francisco Bay Area and wider California and has been in business for more than 30 years, according to an archived version of its website.