risks they might be exposed to. >> why don't you go in with trucks? >> that can be dangerous and not a tactically wide decision. that's up to the incident commander. >> [ inaudible question ] are you concerned there may be contained flammables that won't be contained if these metal keeps cooking? >> that's always a concern. in an evolving situation when you're dealing with such a large amount of fire and hot fire that's already proven itself to be fairly aggressive behavior, i wouldn't say anything in outside the realm of possibility. metal can lose its strength when exposed to dangerous heat. it could be dangerous for anybody going down there to fight a fire, yes

>> any injuries? >> i haven't heard of any injuries at this time. >> what can you tell us about nustar? >> i can't tell you a lot about nustar at this time. i don't know if they've had significant incidents. there was a vegetation fire up interstate 80 a little west of here last summer. but i don't think it was associated with the refinery's operation. i'm unaware of any other incidents in the refinery itself. >> are you confident that another tank is not going to eplode? >> i am not confident of that. i know they're doing a lot of what they're doing right now to prevent that from occurring. >> you're attacking that hillside pretty aggressively with water drops and so forth. why is that? are you concerned about it spreading to other tanks up above? >> it could be that. it could be that the vegetation on that side is a little bit thicker.

it looks like there's more brush and trees as opposed to the grass you see on this side. they may be concerned about fire spreading to the vegetation and to the tanks at the top of the hill. that's up to cal fire and the incident command. >> are the vegetation fires out? >> the vegetation for the most part is out. i haven't heard any other radio traffic but i've been talking to you folks. i don't see active fire burning over there. that doesn't mean the fire is fully out. >> any update on the freeway opening? >> none at this time. >> do you recommend people in this area do once -- you don't have air moving through here. what do you suggest people do when they get home? should they stay home? >> at this point i would listen to the community warning system

notifications if there are any. you can go to cccfpd.org. there may be information on the website. you can bay attention to our twitter, confirepil. we'll provide regular information when we have more information, we'll provide it. >> where is the water being dropped? >> there was retardant over it, dropped over it once. are you thinking of doing it again? >> that would be a decision of the incident commander based on

the effectiveness of putting a bucket of water over a burning pool of petrochemicals. it's probably not an effective method of putting that fire out. if it works, they're going to try it. >> there's an elementary school on the adjacent side. are there any evacuations going on? >> i have not heard of any evacuations. there are shelter-in-place advisories issued for crockett and rodeo. >> what's your advice to anybody downwind that smells this? >> if you have sensitivity, please stay inside. we'll have more information based on the public safety resources on scene. >> thank you, george. >> thank you, george. >> we missed the beginning. >> your name? >> george laing, captain with contra costa.

>> is steve down there? >> in the incident command post. >> you're hearing captain george laing speaking about the fire burning at crockett at the nustar facility. he merngsed there was a shelter-in-place for crockett and rodeo. tore many has also been evacuated. please avoid that area. you're watching live. i'm ama daetz here with larry beil. as we've been keeping on top of it broke out and that thick black shoek could be seen all cross the bay beus a ctain was describing just a few minutes ago, you can't just do a water drop. if you've ever dealt with a grease fire, you pour water on top and then get an explosion. we've had reports that there's

at least some ethanol in one tank that is burning. but the captain said it could be a mix of fluids. there are going to be -- they're going to be erring on the side of caution. we got a statement from nustar. this is a nustar energy storage facility and they say they're working with first responders to extinguish the fire at its sell by terminal in crockett, california. there are two impacted tanks. i'm reading their statement, holding low volumes of ethanol. they're saying less than 1% of tank capacity. continuing with the nustar statement, all personnel are safe and accounted for. nustar immediately enacted emergency response procedures. adjacent tanks are cooled to minimize the risk of the fire spreading. this is all the information we have to provide at this time but we'll pass along additional information as it becomes available. that is the statement from nustar. they control this facility.

>> our melanie woodrow has been looking into this company. melanie, what have you found? a couple prior incidents maybe from this facility? >> absolutely. let's talk about those. they're not what you would expect and not where this fire is. cal osha says there were two previous accident investigations back in 2015. one was in january in pittsburg, california. and the other was in august of 2015 in wilmington, california. the spokesperson i've been communicating with says he does not have information right now about that pittsburg incident. but in the wilmington incident back in 2015, just a worker who had fallen off a moving golf cart and injured his head. cal osha did not issue any citations in either of these incidents. you'll know earlier we said cal osha said they didn't believe there were any incidents whatsoever. the same spokesperson says

sometimes an employer will list their name in different ways. at first glance it didn't appear there were cal osha investigations. but getting lots of calls from report ertz across the bay area and they found these two incidents. we're waiting to hear more about the one in pittsburg back in 2015. i want to tell you a little about the facility. we know it's a petroleum storage facility with 70 terminal and end storage facilities. we know they handle a number of different liquids including petroleum products, specialty chemicals, crude oil and other liquids. nustar is putting out a statement saying there were very low volumes of ethanol. we heard fire officials saying earlier that ethanol typically burns blue and we're seeing thick, black smoke. it's not clear what, if any, chemicals might have been mixed in here. i also can tell you nustar has

about 1500 employees. they went public in 2001 at the time with a about the 160 employees. according to the website, $1.8 billion in revenue, 9 million miles of pipeline with the terminal and storage facilities. >> melanie, thank you for the deep dive into the background of nustar. >> they're a san antonio-based companies, bill themselves as one of the independent liquid terminal pipeline operations. they store for local refineries. they work with everybody. why this happened, the cause, we're far from knowing at this point. this is a really good angle. firefighters wanted it close enough to get water and other retardant materials on the blaze, but not too close because this is still a very da situation.

>> they're sending the cooling products in so it doesn't get more volatile. as we mentioned from the official communication from nustar, all personnel are safe and accounted for. all our reporters and crews have been checking with local hopitals to find out if anyone has shown up there with any breathing issues, things like that. our leslie blinkly is in vallejo at kaiser. have you heard information about anybody coming there related to this fire? >> reporter: well, i've made contact with the hospital about 45 minutes ago and they have still not confirmed whether they're treating patients here related to the fire. certainly, as you can see behind me, there is quite a scene with the smoke rising up from rodeo and that smoke going up in the air and then drifting in kind of a northeasterly direction right over the hospital. if you take a look back there, you'll see the smoke is drifting

over the kaiseriting up here to and settling above us in a dark black cloud. we understand from the health department that the smoke is aloft and the toxins aren't posing a danger to us. we don't know where things stand as far as patients being treated for any smoke inhalation problems. we'll get back to you as soon as we find out. in vallejo, leslie brinkley, abc 7 news. want to show you some aerial views because this is obviously going to be seen from a variety of areas. this is our east bay hills camera. officials have closed both directions of interstate 80, so traffic in that area is going to be very challenging for people trying to get home. >> they've extended it, highway 4 all the way to 780 and the carquinez bridge. >> huge plumes of smoke.

it doesn't appear -- you've got the mt. tam camera on the left-hand side. it doesn't appear it will be out any time soon. they have to approach it with an abundance of caution. we know, based on what we've just been told, and krit ten zee reported earlier that it was ethanol and the statement from nustar indicates that yet the fire department said, well, it would burn blue if it was just ethanol. so we've got to get this all sorted -- whatever it is -- >> part of tanks, the pipes, looking at all that. it's interesting because nustar said two tanks. the fire department had been saying that there were actually three large tanks burning. we're getting more information as we go on the right-hand side. down the area and make sure nothing flares up trying to preserve the hillside. look at that smoke on the left-hand side. it is just sitting there in the air. that's our sutro cam.

while it is good, spencer said earlier winds were gusting at like 3 miles per hour. that helps so the fire doesn't spread up the hill extremely quickly as we look from the walnut creek camera, but the smoke just hangs there. >> again, there's not much they can do about it at this point. you've got to be extremely careful in how you approach it. i see wisps of flames, and i'm assuming that's just the reverse angle of the one tank that is burning. the other appeared to burn out quickly. you mentioned a third tank. >> look at emeryville. >> a huge plume of smoke sitting there over the city. >> the person lee ann was speaking with, captain george laing. he was saying environmental health is monitoring the smoke and what's in it because you know there are those sensitive groups out there who are very,

very sensitive to what is in the air. >> sure. let's go to the phone right now. we have dr. rohan with the cocoa county deputy. he's a health officer. what is your take on what is happening here and the potential danger in the community of crockett and outlying areas, doctor? >> so, thank you for informing the public from contra costa health services hazardous materials, i'm here at the department operations center. we know that particulate matter from the ethanol tank as well as from close by grass fires is in the air. our hazardous material team is in the field with remote air monitoring and has picked up elevated levels of particulate matter 2.5. those are small tar t tar t that can be more dangerous for

people who are sensitive, young children, elderly with lung and heart conditions. we want to exercise the current recommendation for that area which is to shelter-in-place. don't go outside and ask what's happening. please stay indoors until the sirens stop which go off every 30 minutes. >> doctor, it's really early. do you have any indication from this particulate matter knowing exactly what has burnt thus far? >> to our knowledge from the nustar facility there were two tanks, one had ethanol in it. the other was empty. of course, there are often bye products and other things from the paint on the tanks to other additives. right now we've picking up particulate matter 2.5 which you see in common fires and can be sensitive for anyone. we don't know of any additional chemicals or hazardous materials. but this is a common one that's well studies.

that's why we want people to be safe and shelter-in-place. >> let's talk about that shelter-in-place. obviously we don't know when this fire is going to be out. but let's just say if they could get it out in an hour which i don't think is going to happen, but how bad is this considering there isn't really much wind to spread out the particles and get it out of the area. are we looking at long-term shelter-in-place. can you speak to that at all? >> it's evolving, so we will update the community warning system with the sirens every 30 minutes based on the information that we have. we do have mobile teams in the field, for example, in crockett, school recently got out and we sent a remote team to the middle school and high school to look at local air quality and did see elevated amounts of particulate 2.5 which is why we wanted to reenforce for those during the school pickup, drop-off period to continue to stay indoors and shelter-in-place.

>> doctor, you mentioned 2.5. what's the 2.5 in reference to? >> that's the size of the particle. it's a smaller particle, so it can go into the lungs and stay into the lungs. you can notice changes immediate immediately, increase in blood pressure, increase in respiratory rate. it can cause inflammation initially. so the best thing to do is to avoid the exposure to it. >> is that something where, if you lap to be outside and didn't know that you needed to shelter in place and you're starting to feel those effects, you need to get to the energy room right away? >> if you're feeling out of the ordinary, you should consult your health team. for now we do have it zoned off with the community warning system to areas in closer proximity and our recommendation is, if you're in those areas and in particular downwind, that you should stay indoors and shelter in place.

>> doctor, you mentioned that particularly sensitive to this at this point would be young children and the elderly. at what point do you look at this situation, as ama mentioned, it continues to burn where it's a problem for just young children and the elderly? >> well, exposure is cumulative. it's the quantity of the particles in the air and also the duration. the more recent wildfire smoke guidelines often look at a 24-hour time period here. hopefully we're dealing with the shorter term exposure and older guidelines look at exposure over an hour. from our measurements in the field, we have elevated amounts for the past hour which is why the safest thing is to stay indoors and not be exposed. as mentioned, it's an evolving situation and we'll update our recommendation every 30 minutes in terms of sheltering in place. >> doctor, we appreciate you talking to us and giving us some insight on the health quality of our air. we'll probably check back with

you in a little bit to see if anything has changed. thank you so much. >> you're welcome. so we're coming up on about 2 1/2 hours of this fire burning in the community of crockett. you can see there's no end in sight with a huge plume of black smoke that is burning. you look at the terrain here and the difficulty, imagine, if you were going up there to try to fight this blaze, you don't have a lot of angles you can attack it from, especially because you're limited in what you can do from the air, and you heard one of the captains, captain laing from contra costa fire say they're reluctant to do a water drop because then you could have a noburng. rs as going to try to keep this thing contained to where it is right now. you see the one tank in the foreground that's already burned out and that was because presumably it was empty so there was no flammable material in there. they're talking about a 1%

ethanol mix. the question is what else is in there? what's creating the black smoke as opposed to the blue smoke that's typical when you have an ethanol fire? nobody really cares at this point. they want to figure out a way to get this fire out. >> absolutely. if you're anywhere in the bay area, you can see the thick black smoke coming off of this. our crews are all out covering this. luiz pena is on 80. where on 80, can you tell us? >> reporter: we're on i-80, maybe 6.6 miles from the fire. i wish i could show you the thick black smoke we're looking at right now. we're in bumper-to-bumper traffic. this fire erupted before p.m. at the nustar facility. east bay traffic was diverted towards highway 4 and westbound

to interstate 780. carquinez bridge is now closed. contra costa county health officials are calling this a hazardous material emergency. we're in bumper-to-bumper traffic. many people here next to us, everybody getting frustrated at this point. obviously at this time we're 6.4 miles away from where the fire is still burning. this would normally take us 10 to 15 minutes to get there. now they're telling us 45 minutes. that's how far we are at this point. luz pena. >> i'm surprised they're moving at all. the word we got is interstate 80 is closed in both directions near the storage facility. i'm not sure they'lle able toos e no matter how much time it takes at least this afternoon. >> that's going to filter to all the other freeways. it's going to be a miss. >> traffic is admittedly going to be bad. it's the least of the concerns

unless you're stuck in the traffic. the number one concern is the particulate matter that's in the air. that's the road blocked off, 80. i presume luz is beyond that road stoppage, that hazard right there. it's going to prevent other vehicles from getting closer. i'm starting to see oh does it look more like white smoke at this point? >> a little bit. it's a close view. >> we'll have to check other angles. you can see the traffic on the right-hand side of your screen. we're going to be backed up for miles. >> is that lee ann's camera? our lyanne melendez is the closest there. she was on the hillside until a dozer came through and they needed to move people back because they were creating a fire break to keep the flames from climbing that hill. hopefully we'll be able to talk to lee ann momentarily and tell else the latest situation from

where she is. >> the good news is they were able to contain the vegetation at some poi, get a little wind and then embers in the sky and you have communities going up. we do not, do not have that at this point. you can see this area is somewhat self-contained with the storage facilities there and it doesn't appear to be a ton of housing nearby. it's an industrial facility, industrial area. there's lyanne melendez. we'll see if she's getting ready to give us a report. i thought we might be seeing more white smoke. now that sky 7 swings around, it's still thick black smoke. i'm told lyanne melendez is ready. what's the latest from the scene? >> reporter: at 4:30, we'll have a press conference with the latest on this fire.

but we heard before and i think maybe he will have something new. we heard before about how that hillside over there, the fire has been put out, and that's a good thing. they were very aggressive with it. crews and the contra costa county fire department also putting that out. look how close it came to us. here are tracks. i want to show you,ig over he, right through here and did what it was supposed to do. can you follow that, right over there, shepherd? that's the big, big fire line. that's in a sense what stopped the fire from spreading to where we are, even closer to where we are. that still continues to burn and there we mentioned before they are attacking it with water on the outside and also crews, which we can't see from this

vantage point, are also attacking it i suspect with some kind of retardant or foam. i know they had been requesting that because this is a chemical fire. they want to be very careful not to do the wrong thing. we had mentioned before that one of the tanks was empty. the other one was ethanol. but they have not confirmed that yet. i believe the company has but the fire department here has not confirmed that yet. and the congress certain, also, was for that hillside on the left of your screen which, as you can see, has a lot more trees, there's more brush there than this area, and it seems like it's a little more lush even though conditions here are extremely, extremely dry. there are two very important closest to me, that they're re.

pouring water on that perhaps to cool it off, to cool that tank off. that they can do without any concerns for any chemicals inside. they want to cool those tanks off, really very important to do that. here you go again. my friend the bulldozer here trying to -- let me get out of the way here. that has helped tremendously. i have to say the crews here that were attacking that hillside over there did an amazing job, very quickly, very aggressive. we saw -- before we saw

air drops and that helped contain that fire tremendously. i am cautiously optimistic right now. but let's look to the left here. that's gray smoke. that's probably good news because that has died down significantl significantly from the moment we came here. go ahead. >> sorry to interrupt. how far away are you physically and what does it smell like where you're located? >> reporter: it smells like a fire. it doesn't smell like any chemicals or anything like that. it just smells like burning brush is what i smell from here. i'm not very far. i would say maybe -- what is that, shepherd, a quarter mile down the hill and there we are. that's why, because this plant, if you will, is so close to

interstate 80, there was concern for drivers, for people on -- that's why they decided to close both sides of interstate 80 because of that fire, but the winds were never significant in any way. so that has helped firefighters here tremendously, a also helped contain the smoke as well because we have seen the smoke go up, up, up, up, up in the air and not spread throughout. we heard before fire alarms. that was alerting the community and so shelter-in-place, and i want to tell people tonight that, if the winds pick up, you want to still be inside and shelter in place. i'm not an expert, but after talking to some of the people who know about these things, they say if that wind shifts and that smoke is going to be in the air for a long time, the safest

thing to do is stay home and shelter-in-place. so we're preparing any minute now to get more information on perhaps -- i don't know if we have the cause, but basically we will know how things have ha t hours since we got here, and it has been a very aggressive fire. i've covered fires in the past. but this is a different animal. this is ae which is a lot more complicated, if you will, than the fires we typically cover. here we are. boy, talk about live news. here you go, crews from -- i think it's marin county? are you guys from marin? marin county. thank you. also helping out to create even

a bigger fire line. i'm thinking that they may be going behind where we can't see to create an even bigger line. they don't want that fire to move any closer, although i'm seeing right now, larry, that it is significantly less than what it was just a few minutes ago. that's what we have, again, waiting for new information. >> i was going to mention that you were right on the money when you mentioned a few minutes ago it appears to be more gray smoke. i know you can't see because you have the smoke coming right up at you, but it appears all the water they've been pouring on that tank has really in the past five minutes made a huge difference. flames were much, much smaller than they were a half hour ago. it appears tremendous progress is being made. the fire is still actively burning, but the amount of smoke

and just the side size of the flames has diminished dramatically. >> about eight minutes ago, cal fire tweeted an update on this fire saying the vegetation fire is 15 acres. earlier it was at five acres. now they're saying up to 15 acres and 20% contained, saying cal fire crews were unable to get access to parts of the veg takes fire because of the proximity to the tanks. it's a logistics issue as well. >> reporter: i just want to make one more point. the smoke that i see is coming from that left tank. before we weren't sure which tank it was. so we were saying earlier that one of the tanks had ethanol. that has not been confirmed here with the fire department. and the other one was empty. that makes sense. i may be wrong, but look at the one on the right. there's no smoke coming from

that one. all of the smoke is coming from that left tank. >> it looks like we're getting ready for the news conference that you mentioned a few moments ago. can you do me a favor and put your mask on. i'm somewhat uncomfortable with you that close. i know you have to talk to us. i see our cameraman, shepherd, has his mask on. take care of yourself first. the good news is it does appear that the flames are subsiding a bit. >> why don't we get everyone updated in case they're tuning in. actually a news conference is beginning right now. let's listen in. >> we're about 2 1/2 hours in, about 200 firefighters reporting on scene at the nustar facility behind me. the fire has been burning since

slightly before 1:50 when the initial calls came in. a couple of quick updates that i think are important to get out before we get to the details of the incident as we understand them right now. one is there is, in fact, no shelter in place for the city of rodeo. at this point there's no shelter in place for the city of rodeo. the shelter-in-place remains in effect for carquinez. another concern is there are schoolchildren in carquinez schools. they are, in fact, still sheltering in place at this point. there had been some discussion of allowing parents to pick them up. working with county health, it's been determined that the conditions there, their conditions down there are not good enough to do that. so shelter-in-place remains in effect for the city of carquinez to include the schools where the children are sheltering there. one other quick update that we only reported just briefly, just a little while ago, in addition

to that shelter-in-place, the city -- the settlement of was evacuated. i don't have an exact number on the people evacuated, somewhere between 12 and 20 people that were evacuated. with that, i'll give you what we know right now as far as the situation goes. we have three large storage tanks that are burning in the facility behind me. they contain ethanol in varying amounts. one of the burning tanks i've been able to verify contained 167,000 gallons of ethanol. they are all burning at this moment and you can see that from the smoke that's rising behind me here. that smoke tends to go up and down, the quantity of it, as the fire progresses. we have a number of tanks that

also contain flammable materials in that tank farm surrounding the burning tanks. we're concerned that the fire, of course, not spread to those. we're fighting fires with a combination of water and firefighting foam, and we're using water to cool the adjacent tanks to keep them from becoming involved in fire. you may be able to see off to my left, behind me here, we've had a number of vegetation fires which have started as a result of the main fire in the facility. we've been attacking them from the air and the ground to keep them under control and contained. the good news, at this point, they all are contained. lapse to be in an area well defined by fire breaks and roads like interstate 80 where we're standing right now. so we've been able to contain all those vegetation fires. at this point our strategy is to continue to attack the fires that are burning, to get them

under control and of course out while we're protecting the remaining tanks that are not burning by keeping them cool so they don't keep involved. we'll continue to fight the vegetation fires as necessary, but it looks like those are largely under control at this point. with that i think i'll take your questions. >> do you have any idea how long it's going to take to get under control, how long the situation is going to last? >> jodi, there's a lot of fuel in those tanks. a bunch has burned as we've seen in the last 2 1/2 hours. there's still plenty left to burn. one of the things we're concerned about is the structural integrity of those burning tanks. we have had one collapse earlier in the afternoon which caused the fire to flare up. we can't predict whether that's going to happen to the remaining tanks or not. >> are we talking hours,

potentially into tomorrow? >> standing here right now, it's impossible to predict that. >> do we know what caused it? was it an explosion? how did it start? >> we don't know the answer toi will certainly investigate this along with no doubt technical experts to make a determination about that. at this point we're concerned with fighting fire, keeping it from spreading. it's too early to say what may have caused the fires. >> [ inaudible question ] >> the early reports about 1:50 said there were explosions. there are also reports that some barrels were involved in fire. those were the early reports of the initial reporting parties in to 911. since then i don't have any additional information on that. those were the initial reports. >> was anybody injured? >> to this point, thankfully we

have no injuries thankfully from the nustar staff or our firefighters. we're working hard to keep it that way. >> naud naud k[ inaudible quest >> as i understand it, ethanol that we see at the gas pumps is an additive. it's added to gases lean to enhance the characteristics of the gasoline. it's an add defensive. >> is it dangerous when it burns? >> we have county health on scene making determinations, taking air measurements. i'll try to have information on the air quality in our next briefing which will be about 45 minutes after we finish this. i don't know right now but you can make assumptions from the shelter-in-place order that there's some concern about the air quality itself. >> talk about the defensive approach you're taking, why the firefighters aren't down there attacking it. >> well, the firefighters were

initially down there right in the tank farm. they've now taken a bit of a step back. we have to strike a balance between fighting a defensive fire and protecting the lives of the firefighters and the other people ssisng them and getting the fire out. we're trying to strike that balance right now. we're still putting water and foam on those fires. we're doing it for a little distance. but they're down there in that tank farm. >> naud naud k[ inaudi[ inaudi[i >> there could be an increase in fire if one of the tanks would rupture. we had a rupture earlier that spread to the berms around those tanks. that's what caused the big flare-up around 2:30, about an hour or so into the fire. we're concerned it could be a structural failure which would spread the fire and put anyone in the immediate vicinity in danger. >> [ inaudible question ].

>> it's my understanding that one of those three tanks did suffer a structural failure. that's a little conjecture, but it seems that was the case. that caused the fire to what's called the secondary containment facility which is dikes and gravel around the tanks and farm. >> [ inaudible question ]. >> i haven't heard those reports. i'm not aware of that. i can't imagine that would have anything to do with this fire. >> was there any damage that this facility reported from the earthquake that affects other facilities? >> if there was, i'm not aware of that. that would be a great question for the company. >> steve, do you know whether there were workers down there when this happened? >> it's my understand that the facility was open and working and there were presumably workers in the facility. they were the initial reporters of the fire to 911. by the time we arrived on scene, they had evacuated or were

evacuating. other than in liaison with us, with fire, it's my understanding they're all out of the facility at this point. >> since we're live, can you tell us what that is? >> we're hearing in the background the community warning sirens the facility operates to notify the community of an emergency at their facility. the appropriate action to be taken right now based on what's going on is to heed the shelter-in-place order for the city of carquinez. of course, the town of toomey which has already been evacuated. interstate 80 has been shut down in both directions from the carquinez bridge down to highway 4. that's an area to avoid, as is this entire area between -- basically between carquinez and rodeo on san pablo road which is also shut down. that's to allow firefighter

access to the facility. >> can you clarify who is under the shelter-in-place? is it hercules, crockett? you mentioned carquinez? >> at this point the only city that's under a shelter-in-place order is the city of carquinez. we have county health that's out long with con fire and county hazmat making evaluations of the air quality. we will get that out immediately by twitter and also community warning system, and i'll share it with you at our next update. >> steve, can you clarify what you mean by shelter in place? what do people need to do? let's say people are getting home from work right now and clarify that for us? >> it's probably apparent to your viewers, but the air quality is not very good right now in the area, especially in the direction of carquinez. the shelter-in-place order is designed to ensure people go indoors, close their doors and windows, of course. if need be seal doors and

windows with wet towels and tape if they judge it's necessary. not engage in any outdoor activities and remain there until the shelter-in-place order is lifted. >> that's only for carquinez? >> that's only carquinez at this point. >> [ inaudible question ]. >> the populated area just to the north of where we are right now. >> how many people? >> i don't know the population of carquinez. it's not a big city. there are quite a few people there. any other questions? >> [ inaudible question ]. >> i believe that's ashes from the vegetation fire. if it's wet, it may be firefighting foam. our strategy is to use the foam to get the fires under control. if there's no more questions, it's now 4:45. we'll do this at 5:30 unless something happens remarkable in the meantime and we'll do it sooner. >> [ inaudible question ].

>> i hope to. if it's available, i will have it. thank you. >> lyanne, any chance we can get clarification on the third tank? we keep hearing two. i don't know if lyanne is able to hear that. >> we see two clearly. maybe there's a third tank that they're concerned about. >> it looks like maybe there's an adjoining that connected, perhaps that's part of it. >> just in the time steve hill was doing a comprehensive job of recapping the situation for cal fire, for all our viewers, we've seen the fire virtually go out. there was a little bit of a flame there. in the past ten or 15 minutes, cal fire has done a fantastic job of getting this thing contained because it was a

raging inferno when we came on shortly after 2:00, but certainly when we began this newscast 45 minutes a ago. hardly any smoke left at this point, and you see those flames there. the concern from cal fire is they don't want any of the adjoining tanks nearby on this tank farm -- obviously the area is so hot from all the flames and two hours of burning, plus they don't want any of the other tanks to go up, otherwise they'll have another situation to deal with from scratch. to recap from the beginning, the explosion was first reported around 2:00 this afternoon. it happened at the snu star fuel storage facility located in crockett which is about 30 miles away from san francisco, northeast, two tanks on fire. although steve hill mentioned they had a third tank they were concerned about. >> one had 167,000 gallons of ethanol in it. >> they said there was 1%

capacity of the tank being used. tells you how much they hold. the other tank which i believe is what you're seeing on the left of your screen which has been out for some time, that was empty. contra costa county health department, you see the fire taken from somebody on twitter, from the roadway, i assume 80, a raging ball of fire. contra costa county health department issued a shelter-in-place order for people in crockett and rodeo. that has been lifted at least in rodeo. carquinez is now the only community under a shelter-in-place order. residents are told to stay indoors, close their windows, close your doors, don't go outside to do anything. you see the foam they've been using. >> tormey was evacuated.

it was 176,000 gallons of ethanol in that one tank. >> the best news of all, no injuries either by employee employees. contra costa county supervisor john jolla is with us. >> i think steve hill from our fire agency give you a thorough update, first being that the shelter-in-place is now really just the crockett, carquinez area. by him referring to carquinez, i assume he's referring to krolkt, the eastern community. it's no longer for rodeo. the county health department website still shows the shelter in place for rodeo. if that's a change, they'll indicate thatw is there was an

explosion at the nustar facility and the tank on fire contained ethanol. i have heard there's also jet fuel pipelines in that vicinity, in that area. as the fire department has acknowledged, its job is preventing the spread of this fire. the nustar facility is essentially a terminal, a storage facility where products from area refineries go in and out by pipeline. the product is conveyed by pipeli pipeline. they're obviously trying to prevent the spread of the fire into the fuel in these pipelines as well. there will be an investigation by county hazardous materials, county fire and bay area quality management district. i serve on the bay area district board, and after something like this, there's joint investigations to determine the root cause of the fire. ultimately what we have found

over the years with industrial accidents like this is that they're usually due to some type of failure in a process or syst system, whether there was an inspection schedule not maintained, a safety culture problem. we don't know that yet. that will come out in a root cause analysis that could lead to fines, pltds, corrective action to prevent this from happening. it is always -- there's really no margin for error here. it is unacceptable to have an industrial accident like this that puts neighboring communities at risk, both from smoke which is unhealthy to breathe as well as a risk of a spreading fire. i live in richmond and have lived through industrial accidents myself, and i know how that feelsz. the goal here is all of these facilities always need to take

proactive steps to prevent something like this from happening. so that's why there will be -- the first goal after the fire is put out is to understand what caused it. >> john, have you had much interaction in the past with snu star energy? i know they're based in san antonio. but this is a massive storage farm here. >> i have not. the county has -- we have an industrial safety ordinance, the strongest in the country, local ordinance. it coffers the four refineries plus the chemical pla it does not cover storage facilities. however, our hazardous materials division at the county does implement various state health and safety laws and inspects these facilities so they will have a record. i have not heard what that record is. they'll have a record of their inspections and will be

cooperating with fire and air district to conduct an investigation. i have not had any personal dealings, our dealings have been with the area refineries and chemical kplants plants. but this is the first major fire recently at a storage terminal. >> fortunately, this could have been much worse. we'll have to wait and see what happens with the air quality. fortunately we're hearing nobody was injured that we know of so far. you guys, this is in your back yard. how often are you guys reviewing what needs to take place in order to keep people safe in case of these incidents? >> well, as i say, for refineries and chemical plants, there are inskmek r spec tors at these facilities almost every day from either the district or the county. the refineries in the chemical plants are required to file

pretty regular stringent reports to what's basically about reducing the risk in all aspects of their facility. so when this ordinance was passed 20 years ago, it was the year that several workers died at the tosco facility in martinez. back in the '90s, there were a number of serious accidents at local refineries. things have improved since the passing of the ordinance although these facilities, storage facilities are covered under state regulations and not by the local ordinance because generally they haven' been viewed to have the same high level of risk of a refinery. so there clearly will be an investigation by the state working with local agencies. i can't tell you inspection record at the state.

the refineries and chemical plants, the county spends a fair amount of time with those facilities to improve safety. >> what about just keeping the residents who are in the area safe. do you guys feel like everything went the way it should have gone today? >> i don't know until we've seen everything. i don't know whether the shelter-in-place was issued soon enough. we'll look at those when there's been incidents where i live in richmond. that is never a pleasant feeling. i think here the county, sheriff's department, office of emergency services working with the health department issues the shelter-in-place as soon as they get the available information. it appears that the shelter-in-place was issued pretty quickly to rodeo and krol krolkt. fortunately there was a small area evacuated, very small. so we'll look at all of those

things, but it appears that the shelter-in-place went out quickly which ultimately led to trying to keep people safe and not breathing the unhealthy smoke. >> interesting, as you were talking here, we had pretty much gray and white smoke for the better part of the last ten minutes or so. and now -- i'm wondering whether the real danger is, john, the pipelines that connect all these tanks. you can see how this could get really out of control if one of those pipelines ignites. >> right. i'm sure steve hill who is great at representing what the firefighters are seeing on the ground can specifically address that. clearly the potential for a fire in a tank to spread exists because of these pipelines that carry a very flammable, combustible product. in this case ethanol is very flammable and combustible, so is

jet fuel. so we're not talking about products -- not to be lightly taken. i'm sure the firefighters are taking all that into consideration to prevent the fire from spreading. yes, it spreads through the pipeline, it spreads, goes to another tank, spreads and becomes a grass fire off the facili facility. the fire seems to have done a good job working very hard putting themself at risk to control this fire. so that's the good news. but they're going to work hard to the very end until that fire is out and protect both the workers there and the surrounding residents. >> with all that fuel just coming in, apparently this is where they store it so it's all getting piped in. >> what's happened when there's been a major fire at a

the fire is sort of under pressure and it's being refined. it's going through a very intense process. usually what a refinery will do is shut off the fuel to the area where the fire is occurring which is what happened in 2012 with the chevron fire. here i don't know how that facility operates. clearly i'm sure they have looked at shutting off fuel to continue to feed the fire or control the fire until it burns out. they're there, dealing with it. so far they seem to have been successful in that regard, but i'm sure when they arrived on scene, their first concern is the fire could spread through the pipelines and proactive to prevent that from happening so

far. >> john, we appreciate your time. we've got to let you go here. we see another plume of black smoke. we want to go to the scene where abc's lyanne melendez is on the hillside and not too far away. >> that's anybody's guess right now what that's all about. we had before seen it die down. as you can see behind me, the flames are up again. what is different though is that third tank where they're really pouring water on that one, i guess to cool it down, to make sure that those flames don't transfer over in case there is, let's say, an explosion or anything like that. remember what he was saying. we're talking about steve hill who is the public information officer for the contra costa county fire department, that there was some structural

integrity. remember he said that one of the three tanks, in fact, collapsed. he did talk to us several minutes ago and i always say following a press conference, that's when you get the best information. he wanted to clarify a few things that are important. he mentioned carquinez was -- there was a no shelter-in-place order. he didn't mean carquinez. he meant the town of crockett. again, crockett has been ordered to shelter-in-place. he also said that rodeo was not ordered to shelter-in-place. now he's saying they are recommending that also rodeo shelter in place. that's the people there. i want to make it very clear at that press conference, they said that three tanks were involved here. all of them, the three tanks had ethanol, different amounts of ethanol. of course, the largest one had

160,000 gallons of ethanol. so right here, right now as you can see behind me, they are fighting that fire as best they can with water, cooling down to exterior tanks. you can also see foam, and actually -- as the air moved towards us, you could also feel a little bit of that foam on us, falling on us. again, the winds are not strong at all. that's keeping things contained and that's a good thing. we had initially on the right here a fire, a brush fire. that has been contained as well. but i think now what they're doing is they're approaching it from behind those tanks to see if they can, again, cool it down and minimize the damage here. what worried me i think the most was the issue of the structural

integrity. one of those tanks already collapsed, and we know that. so when you have these elevated high, high temperatures, fire, chemical fires, i know it's sort of not the same, but you think of the twin towers in new york city. so that is still in the back of their minds. it's something they worry about and, o i'll toss it back to you guys. >> lee ann, thanks very much. this has been going on since 2:00 today. it's still very much a breaking news situation as the ethanol continues to burn at the nustar facility in crockett. it looks like we have some time to go before this situation is resolved. >> right now we'll continue oura all of our students went into shelter-in-place. >> major fire in contra costa

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