Nine Los Angeles County firefighters were injured Thursday morning while trying to extinguish a semi-truck with pressurized natural gas tanks that caught fire in Wilmington, authorities said.
Fire crews responded to the blaze just before 7 a.m. at 1120 N. Alameda St., near the Marathon Los Angeles Refinery in Wilmington, according to the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
At the scene, they found a semi-truck on fire that contained two 100-gallon compressed natural gas cylinders on it.
Several firefighters were working to put out the flames when one of two tanks exploded minutes later, authorities said.
Video captured on a neighbor’s camera shows a plume of white smoke rising in the sky and then a large fireball erupts.
Nine firefighters were injured in the blast, with two suffering critical injuries, and eight of them were taken to the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, authorities said. The other firefighter was airlifted to a burn center in Los Angeles. The other firefighters suffered injuries ranging from moderate to minor, authorities said.