Massive flames, explosions rock waste facility in Sydney's West

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Fire fighters have been injured in a fierce inferno at a Western Sydney chemical recycling business after an explosion caused fist-sized chunks of concrete to rain down on crews.

Transcript

00:00Well the footage of the huge fireball that erupted during the explosion late last night

00:08at this waste facility in North St Mary's is just extraordinary.

00:13You can see the flames leaping into the air 150 to 200 metres up into the air.

00:20We're told that a chemical tank was blasted into the air and all sorts of debris from

00:27buildings, surrounding buildings that were affected by this blast rained down on firefighters.

00:34This is the size of one of the chunks of concrete debris that rained down onto the firefighters.

00:42They were ducking for cover trying to protect themselves.

00:47It's a very heavy piece of almost like a ballast, an asphalt and a couple of firefighters suffered

00:56minor injuries and were taken away for treatment but it's really very lucky, fire authorities

01:03say, that more firefighters weren't injured.

01:07Now local neighbours heard this blast, they saw the smoke, they rang triple O, it was only

01:14moments apparently after triple O calls were made that we got this explosion happening.

01:20We were just driving home and we seen a massive explosion.

01:25We just live right across the road so yeah it's pretty threatening around here but we can

01:30see stuff flying up in the air.

01:31We had heat blow up on our faces, it was pretty threatening, it was very scary.

01:36Terrifying, I feel bad for the firefighters currently on scene now so I wish them the best of luck.

01:42Now it's very unclear at this stage what caused this fire, this is a, we're told, a chemical

01:50recycling facility here at North St Mary so there are a lot of chemicals that are stored

01:56on site and you've got to imagine that if that didn't spark the fire that it certainly

02:02would have fuelled the fire and potentially fuelled that explosion.

02:06It's going to be several days before firefighters and investigators can get in and have a look

02:13at that fire.

02:14We've got one building that's been completely damaged by this fire, other buildings, surrounding

02:19buildings have had wall collapses and are very structurally unsound.

02:25We've still got the fire burning, it's been contained but as you can see behind me perhaps

02:30there's still a lot of smoke billowing from that building.

02:34We might have a listen to the Deputy Fire Commissioner, Michael Morris, about the scale of this fire.

02:41An extensive explosion occurred during the firefighting operations resulting in a debris

02:46flood.

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