Spectacular Oil Field Blaze Defies Control

A stubborn fire that destroyed at least seven storage tanks in an oil field owned by Union Oil Co. of California in Fullerton burned through the night Tuesday, spewing plumes of thick, black smoke hundreds of feet in the air and shooting sparks that threatened to set off brush fires.

Firefighters, using thousands of gallons of fire-retardant foam, had managed to contain the crude-oil blaze most of the evening, but it flared up again shortly before 8 p.m., when hot fuel spewing from the damaged tanks seeped through the foam, said Sylvia Palmer Mudrick, a spokeswoman for the city of Fullerton.

An hour later, one of two burning tanks collapsed and caused a second flare-up that reignited fires in the other five tanks, Mudrick said. All seven tanks continued to burn late into the night.

Authorities called in an Orange County Fire Department strike team that specializes in controlling brush fires to stand guard as winds sent hot embers into the brush-covered hillsides nearby, Palmer said.

No Injuries Reported

At least two oil company employees were working near the site when the fire began about 12:30 p.m., but no injuries were reported, fire and Unocal officials said. Cause of the blaze had not been determined, they said.

The fire, which sent flames shooting 50 to 75 feet in the air, was located in a cluster of seven above-ground oil tanks about 650 feet from the nearest homes, none of which were ever threatened, Fullerton Fire Chief Ronald Coleman said.

While no structures besides the tanks were threatened, firefighters were delayed in fighting the blaze as they waited for foam fire retardant to arrive 90 minutes later. They were further hampered by a limited water supply, which forced them to lay about 4,000 feet of water hose from the nearest hydrants, fire officials said.

“What really complicated the situation out here (Tuesday) was that we had no water (hydrants) in the area, so we had an extremely difficult situation,” Mudrick said.

But Fullerton Fire Marshal Mark Martin said Unocal was not responsible for maintaining a water supply or required to have fire hydrants in such an undeveloped area.

“The thing to keep in mind is that it’s a completely undeveloped . . . area and (Unocal) is not required to put any hydrants there. The only time you need water is near a developed area, and we have those on Bastanchury (Road) near residences,” Martin said.

An ample water supply was obtained later, after firefighters parked water-pumper trucks at 1,500-feet intervals to sustain an adequate amount of water pressure. One hydrant, located near Bastanchury Road and Brea Boulevard, was more than 4,000 feet from the fire site, fire officials said.

“Even if we had enough water at the beginning, it still wouldn’t have done much good because we also needed foam. With an oil fire, the only thing you can do with water is to keep the oil tanks cool,” Martin said.

“Perhaps if we had water to keep the fire area cooled down and foam at the beginning, we might have been able to put it out early,” he added.

Airport emergency crash units from El Toro Marine Corps Air Station and the county Fire Department, which carry foam fire retardant, had to be requested, Coleman said.

“Most of our fire trucks carry a small amount of foam to fight fires such as these,” he said. “But the reason we had to call in the foam was because our regular units couldn’t spray enough foam in the immediate fire area.

“There was so much collapsed metal from the tanks and connecting pipe systems that, well, it was like fighting a fire inside a metal jungle gym. There was metal everywhere.”

Coleman said airport emergency trucks are equipped with high-pressure nozzles and with crash crews who wear protective gear that allows them to get in close to fight the fire.

Police rerouted traffic around the tank field, which is located in an undeveloped area of about 140 acres at Bastanchury Road, west of State College Boulevard, not far from Cal State Fullerton. They put up road blocks on Bastanchury between Brea Boulevard and State College.

Flames and huge clouds of black smoke were visible for miles in every direction Tuesday and prompted many residents living nearby to close windows and doors to keep the smoke out.

Resident Barbara A. Clark said that when she noted a huge black plume of smoke rising from the oil field, “I knew there was a fire. I looked out of my patio door, and I could see big flames and all this smoke over there.”

Another resident, Jeanne Furnell, said she quickly began closing her windows and doors to her condominium to limit damage due to airborne oil droplets which rained down on condominiums, cars, and vegetation.

Furnell, a longtime Southern California resident, said she could recall an oil refinery fire in Manhattan Beach in the late 1940s. “That one burned for days. They just couldn’t put it out. We closed all our windows, but we still couldn’t prevent oil droplets from coming in,” Furnell said.

“When I saw smoke today, I immediately closed all my windows and doors. Our homes are going to look like a big mess when this is through,” she said.

The field is owned by Union Oil Co. of California, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Unocal Corp., said Barry Lane, a Unocal spokesman who was at the scene.

Lane said that several water hydrants are located on the Union Oil property near the fire site but that “this morning they were inoperable.”

Members of the media and other non-emergency personnel were prohibited from entering the tank field by Unocal employees.

Lane said oil company personnel who had been at work inside the tank field were trained to fight fires. Fire officials said oil company workers did assist firefighters by locating emergency shut-off valves to the tanks.

‘Never a Danger’

“I have no idea how the fire started. But there was never a (safety) danger to any of our personnel,” Lane said.

Damage estimates were unavailable late Tuesday, but at least one 84,000-gallon oil tank was nearly full and three others partially empty, according to fire officials. The Unocal spokesman did not have a damage figure or an estimate of the amount of crude oil lost due to the fire.

The oil field is a processing center where crude oil is warmed by injecting steam at high pressure and the oil is then sent by pipeline to a refinery in Wilmington, Lane said.

“This is a very old oil field, but it is still a very productive field. I do not know what our inventory was here when the fire started,” Lane said.

There are no structures in the oil field itself, fire officials said. The nearest homes in a private condominium complex known as the Pines on Bastanchury were never threatened, they said.