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Seven of the nine Los Angeles firefighters injured when a compressed-natural-gas tank on a semi-truck tractor exploded in Wilmington have been released from the hospital, authorities said on Friday, Feb. 16.
The other two remained hospitalized.
One, a 37-year-old man and nine-year veteran of the Los Angeles Fire Department, was in the Los Angeles General Medical Center in stable-but-critical condition.
The other one was in Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where all nine initially had been taken, for observation.
The seven released firefighters will get “ongoing treatment and support to begin the healing process,” the Fire Department said. “The types of injuries include burns, blunt trauma, shrapnel, concussion, and affects to hearing.”
Just before 7 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 15, 10 firefighters responded to the CNG-powered semi, which was on fire on the 1100 block of Alameda Street. The trucker had noticed something wrong with the rig and called 911.
Six minutes after they arrived, one of the truck’s two 100-pound CNG tanks exploded, sending a fireball as high as the overhead wires and causing a transformer to explode.
About 150 additional firefighters then arrived to help the wounded firefighters and put out the fire.
A firefighting robot applied water by remote control to cool the second tank as the gas continued to burn, officials said.
Debris had scattered to as far as 500 feet away.