Ageing infrastructure is lethal infrastructure: witness the conflagration at a 114-year-old Californian oil refinery

Los Angeles Times

Residents described experiencing seismic-level alarm:

The El Segundo refinery, built in 1911, is Chevron's second largest in the US and produces 285,000 barrels of crude oil every day.

It supplies a fifth of all motor vehicle fuels and 40% of the jet fuel consumed in southern California, Reuters reported.

El Segundo Mayor Chris Pimentel said firefighters were able to respond immediately to the blast.

"Our station is about a .25 mile away from the gates of Chevron," Pimentel told reporters. "Obviously, we are very concerned, and there is a lot of investigative work to be done to see what has happened."

The blaze was visible as far as Los Angeles and filled the air nearby with the smell of petrol.

In addition to investigating the explosion, officials in the city of El Segundo said they are monitoring air quality levels for signs of pollution.

One nearby resident, Mark Rogers, told the Los Angeles Times that the blast was startling for people nearby.

"I thought we got nuked or something," Mr Rogers told the local newspaper. Another resident, Keith Mohr, said the flames looked like they were "300-foot".

"I didn't know if a plane crashed or there was an earthquake or both," he said.

{BBC News 3 October} ‘Massive fire at Chevron refinery in California contained, officials say’

{alternate text for the above image} A dramatic night-time photograph shows the El Segundo oil refinery in California engulfed in flames during the early hours of 3 October 2025. Vast plumes of orange fire and black smoke billow skyward, staining the low clouds and casting a sulphurous glow over the sprawling industrial complex. Illuminated stacks, tanks, and pipelines stand silhouetted against the inferno, their skeletal frames stark in the blaze’s glare. Emergency lights flicker across the grounds below, dwarfed by the scale of the conflagration, while the lights of Los Angeles shimmer faintly in the distance. The image captures both the raw power of industrial catastrophe and the precarious fragility of infrastructure under fire.

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