Explosions at California fireworks facility cause fire in town of Esparto
KMAX, KOVR, OBTAINED BY CBS13, CNN
By Richard Ramos
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California (KOVR) — Several explosions at a fireworks warehouse resulted in a fire in Northern California’s Yolo County, officials said Tuesday evening.
It happened in the community of Esparto. The Yolo County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the building was a fireworks warehouse in the area of county roads 23 and 86A.
Yolo County officials issued mandatory evacuations for a one-mile stretch as a result of the fire. The evacuation area is on the south side of Highway 16, stretching south to County Road 23 and stretching west from Interstate 505 to County Road 85B. The small community of Madison is in the evacuation zone.
Several structures on the property had caught fire, with the flames spreading into multiple grass fires with a combined burn area of approximately 80 acres, the Esparto Fire Protection District said in a Tuesday night news conference. The initial explosion happened around 5:50 p.m.
CBS Sacramento spoke to some people who said they had loved ones believed to have been inside the facility at the time of the incident, but they had not been able to contact them. Law enforcement officials did not comment on whether there were any injuries or deaths when asked by members of the media during the press conference.
Law enforcement officials said streets around the evacuation zone and leading into the facility have been shut down.
CBS News San Francisco’s chopper was in the region due to a grass fire in nearby Vacaville. The chopper flew by the Esparto fire and captured images of the flames.
Cal Fire LNU said it also sent a crew into the area to assist with the fire.
CBS Sacramento’s First Alert Weather Team confirmed the smoke plume from the explosion reached between 10,000 to 15,000 feet in elevation.
Where are Esparto and Yolo County located in California?
Yolo County borders the west side of Sacramento County. Esparto is a small, rural town located about 14 miles west of the city of Woodland in Yolo County and about 35 miles northwest of the city of Sacramento.
Some residents of the area told CBS Sacramento that windows to their homes were rattled by at least two separate explosions. Some described their house shaking like during an earthquake, with explosions going off seemingly every five minutes.
Nearly 2,200 Pacific Gas and Electric customers in the area were left without power due to the incident. PG&E’s online outage map showed the estimated time for full restoration was 1:15 a.m. Wednesday.
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