An enormous fire in a California car scrapyard near Los Angeles forced evacuations on Thursday. The blaze has now been extinguished, but it left the scrapyard and possibly some surrounding businesses devastated.
The Los Angeles County Fire Department said in a Facebook post that it received initial reports of the fire at 3:12 p.m. on Thursday, July 25. Emergency responders were called to A V Recycling Center, a 20-acre plot storing well over 1,000 scrapped cars in Lancaster, north of Los Angeles. When the Fire Department arrived, it found multiple cars in and around the crusher “involved with fire” that was rapidly spreading to other cars. The conflagration would eventually call for a three-alarm response.
Because the fire was consuming cars, it was burning rubber, adhesives, paint, and leftover fluids such as oil and hydraulic fluid. “Fire crews treated the fire as a hazmat situation,” per KTLA5, while KABC7 reported that firefighters heard explosions as cars went up in flames. As black smoke spread for miles around, nearby businesses were evacuated and the public was told to shelter in place, according to CBS News Los Angeles.
The fire ended up burning 10 of the yard’s 20 acres and is estimated to have consumed 1,500 vehicles before reportedly being suppressed around 9:25 p.m. Thursday. Fire crews remained on site overnight for cleanup, and no injuries have been reported. The cause of the blaze is not yet known, but an investigation was underway as of Friday.
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