Four people were injured Wednesday, Feb. 18, when an explosion rocked the Torrance ExxonMobile refinery, at 190th Street and Crenshaw shaking the area hard enough to make nearby residents momentarily fear they were feeling an earthquake.
According to Captain Steve Deuel of the Torrance Fire Department, the explosion occurred around 8:50 a.m. when a gasoline processing unit exploded.
“The explosion was momentary, over and done,” Deuel said. “They blocked in the gasoline that was flowing, stopped the flow and are getting back to stabilization at this time,” Captain Deuel said at a press conference later that morning.
Deuel had no information regarding the four people (initially reported as three at a press conference) who suffered injuries as a result of the explosion, though he did note that they were quickly met by EMS responders and sent to Long Beach medical center for treatment.
“At first, we thought a car had hit the building,” said Jennifer Lee, who works in the Torrance Business Park, on Crenshaw Boulevard, across the street from from the plant. “The whole building shook, the windows shook. We thought it was an earthquake or a car crash, and it turned out to be an explosion.”
James Kemp lives at the northern end of the ExxonMobile facility, near 190th Street and Kornblum Avenue.
“I’ve heard other things happening there, but today was a waker-upper,” he said. “If you were sleeping in, it woke you up. My cat is usually outside, and as soon as the explosion happened, he ran back in, like ‘give me shelter.’”
Kemp was present for a similar explosion about 15 years ago, at a house he lived in across the street from his current residence. “A couple of weeks after we moved in, there was an explosion bad enough to break windows,” he said, adding that the shock from that explosion blew out three windows in his house.
Ash from the explosion fell on cars west of the plant, with a significant concentration occurring between Anza Avenue and Hawthorne Boulevard, where some have half-joked that it was snowing on their cars. ER
Edit: An earlier version of this story gave Captain Deuel an incorrect title. We regret the error.
