LOS ANGELES — A massive fire erupted at a Los Angeles-area Chevron oil refinery Thursday night, sending a fireball in the air and startling residents, according to officials and video that captured the scene.
There were no injuries, Chevron said. The fire was seen at the refinery around 9:32 p.m. (12:32 a.m. ET), according to police in the coastal city of El Segundo. Video posted to social media showed a fireball and the night sky lit up by flames.
“Chevron fire department personnel, including emergency responders from the City of El Segundo and Manhattan Beach are actively responding to an isolated fire inside the Chevron El Segundo Refinery,” a Chevron spokesperson said.
Helicopter footage from NBC Los Angeles showed flames coming from two of the stacks and one other area at the Chevron refinery in El Segundo.
The fire was later contained, El Segundo police said. Chevron said that all employees and contractors were accounted for, and that “no exceedances have been detected by the facilities fence line monitoring system.”
Manhattan Beach, a neighboring coastal city in Los Angeles County, told residents that it was aware of the “unusual fire event” at the Chevron refinery, but that there was no evacuation order. The city told residents to stay inside.
“I saw this thing just go up,” Howard Thorne, a resident of El Segundo for the last eight years, told NBC Los Angeles. “I never, ever fear anything. This — I got in panic mode when I saw it. I was literally in panic mode.”
The Chevron El Segundo refinery is the largest producing oil refinery on the West Coast, according to the facility’s website.
The oil refinery covers around 1,000 acres and has around 1,100 miles of pipelines, and it can refine up to 290,000 barrels of crude oil per day, the company says. It supplies 20% of all motor vehicle fuels and 40% of the jet fuel consumed in Southern California, according to the company.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been briefed on the situation, his office said on X.
“Our office is coordinating in real time with local and state agencies to protect the surrounding community and ensure public safety,” the governor’s office said.
By 11 p.m., helicopter footage from NBC Los Angeles showed firefighters working to douse a plume of flame by spraying from ladder trucks in one part of the facility, while two of the stacks also had flames coming from their tops.
