Furious Blaze Fed by Metal : Fire: Chips of magnesium, which explode on contact with water, fuel flames visible 15 miles away.

Exploding magnesium chips, burning white hot in a City of Industry warehouse Tuesday, fed an intense, spectacular fire with flames visible as far as 15 miles away, fire officials said.

Because magnesium explodes upon contact with water, firefighters initially took up defensive positions around the Mark Metals warehouse at 15429 E. Proctor Ave., training their hoses on the one-story building’s walls--rather than on the flames themselves--in an effort to prevent the walls from collapsing.

But their strategy for combatting the blaze changed and they decided to drown the magnesium in massive amounts of water--up to 5,000 gallons a minute--despite the explosions.

A one-square-mile area surrounding the building was evacuated as a precaution because the burning metal produced a billowing, noxious cloud that could irritate the throat, said Los Angeles County Fire Inspector Elvin Miranda. No injuries were reported.

Assistant County Fire Chief Robert Lee said the fire probably caused more than $1.5 million in damage, but a more precise amount will not be available until an investigation is completed. The building is expected to be a total loss.

Suzanne Hodges, an accounting supervisor at Ital Electronics, next door to the metals firm, said she heard a loud noise and explosion when the fire broke out at 2:45 p.m.

“The windows were shaking,” she said. “The street was vibrating. I went out to move my car, and when I came back, everything exploded. The fire was over the whole building.”

Hodges said the building across the street “was shaking. The booms kept coming. I could feel the ground shaking.”

Tongues of flames snaked more than 100 feet into the air and small pieces of molten magnesium sprayed up through the building’s roof and onto Proctor with each explosion.

Firefighters kept surrounding buildings doused with water to keep them from igniting and confined the flames to the Mark Metals facility.

The fire started while an employee was using a machine to cut magnesium into chips, which the company sells to contractors for use in manufacturing such products as aircraft engines, officials said. A piece of the metal fell on an exposed electrical cord, ignited and quickly spread in the building, where three tons of magnesium chips were stored.

More than 120 firefighters fought the blaze for more than six hours and each time water seeped through to the burning magnesium, another round of spectacular explosions were set off.

Chris Johnson, a hazardous-materials specialist with the County Fire Department, said magnesium fires are difficult to fight because “you have to put a lot of water on them to handle them.”

Normally, a substance such as sand would be used to deprive a magnesium fire of oxygen, smothering it, Johnson said. But sand could not be used on Tuesday’s fire because explosions prevented firefighters from getting close enough, he said.

“They had to fight it from a distance,” he said.

County Fire Capt. Dyrck McClellan said he has only seen a couple of fires “of this magnitude” in 23 years with the department.