The Day After--an Eerie Landscape of Destruction : Tunnel: A fissure smokes like a volcanic vent. A busway is blackened. The freeway is deserted.

Morning light brought into focus a stark scene of destruction Saturday along a burned-out stretch of Metro Rail tunnel beneath the Hollywood Freeway.

The normally bustling highway stood deserted. On a typical weekday, 210,000 vehicles would pass this point within sight of Union Station, but this weekend there was no traffic. Running parallel to the freeway, a blackened stretch of the neighboring El Monte busway bore testament to the heat and smoke from the fire that raged for the better part of a day.

Within feet of the eerily silent freeway, the earth had caved in. Where once there was solid ground, now there was an elongated fissure, still smoking like a volcanic vent. From the streets of the industrial district northeast of downtown Los Angeles, one could look at the scene of the cave-in and see twisted pipes, broken concrete, vast amounts of sand and hard-hatted engineers surveying the damage.

Little more than a block away, near Ducommun and Center streets, the south portal of the subway tunnel displayed the ravages of a fire that burned with such heat that it twisted and distorted steel. A six-foot, fire-charred piece of metal hung precariously above the mouth of the tunnel.

Thousands of wood timbers that once lined the interior of the subway tube were reduced to ashes like kindling in a fireplace. Smoke still poured from an opening above the tube. Firefighters stood by in the summer heat, allowing the blaze to burn itself out.

Meanwhile, powerful pumps worked overtime in a pit where the tunnel ends, sucking out pools of chocolate-brown water and mud that are tangible reminders of the battle against the flames.

By contrast, a parallel tunnel with a full concrete lining was untouched.

As they peered into the opening below, firefighters recalled arriving on the scene around 2 a.m. Friday to find the tunnel in flames. The heat was so extreme, they said, water from their hoses was boiling on the street above.

On Saturday, they marveled at the damage and expressed relief that the intense heat did not ignite the nearby storage tanks at Unocal’s Center Street Terminal.

As they spoke, the morning calm was broken by the groaning of a crane laboring to remove parked cars, trucks and trailers whose weight put added burden on the crippled tunnel below.

For blocks around, streets remained closed. At the scene, streams of yellow police tape framed the destruction.