Neighbors fled for their lives, ignored shelter-in-place order after apocalyptic California refinery blast

Californians ignored a shelter-in-place order and fled for their lives after an oil refinery blast turned their beachside community into a scene from an apocalypse movie.

The explosion at a Chevron facility near Los Angeles shook buildings like an earthquake and sent a fireball 300 feet into the air, causing traffic jams as terrified neighbors tried to get away from the inferno — despite an emergency alert telling people to stay home.

“Alerts started to come up on my phone. I was like, ‘No evacuation? Are you kidding me?’” said Alison Murray, who lives across from the sprawling refinery campus.

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“I yelled at my husband, and we grabbed the kids, and we jumped in the car and drove to my parents’ house, and even there you could see the whole sky was orange,” she said.

The blast ignited around 9:30 p.m. Thursday night at a jet fuel processing facility in Chevron’s 1,000-acre El Segundo facility — the second biggest refinery in the U.S. that produces a fifth of the gasoline and 40% of the jet fuel in Southern California, the company said.

The blast occurred at the southeastern corner of the campus; at the time of writing emergency crews are still to spraying water on the site, but El Segundo officials said the fire has been fully contained and there is “no public threat.”

Murray said she and her neighbors are used to seeing flames from the site’s flare towers, but the massive inferno mere blocks from her home was enough to make people head for the hills.

“Most people who live in the neighborhood got in their cars and left. There was a tremendous amount of traffic just trying to go a few blocks,” Murray said.

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“It sounded like a rocket. I thought it was a rocket launch at first,” said neighbor Samantha Schwarz, 18, who was playing games with her family when the explosion rocked the house and sent a wave of heat through the open windows. 

“There was a flash of light and the house started violently shaking, and I was like ‘Oh my gosh we need to GTFO.’”

She said her parents and brothers didn’t even bother to grab their cell phones before running out the door; outside, “acrid fumes” burned their noses.

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Chevron is still investigating the cause of the blast and working with local agencies to assess any lingering danger to the public, a company spokesperson told The Post.

One of these agencies is the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which is testing the air for toxic fumes and particulate matter.

The air quality in El Segundo had a “good” rating as of Thursday afternoon, according to live air monitoring site IQAir. 

Alison Murray’s family felt safe enough to return home Friday, although they said their across-the-street neighbor is staying in a hotel.

She is cautiously optimistic about the air quality.

“I don’t smell anything. I don’t know if that means anything. With the Palisades Fire you could smell that, and that was far away.”

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Greg Johns, 71, has lived across from the refinery for more than 40 years.

“The windows rattled like no earthquake I have ever experienced,” he said.

But Johns, for one, didn’t flee — in fact, he walked outside to watch the blaze.

“Honestly, I was excited. I’ve lived around here for more than 70 years, and nothing like this has ever happened,” Johns said.

“I knew they made jet fuel there, but I thought it happened somewhere deep in the plant, not right there. I guess ignorance is bliss.”