A gas explosion sparked a large fire in a neighborhood in the San Francisco Bay Area, breaking windows of homes and filling the air with thick smoke, the Associated Press reported. Fire departments said six people were taken to the hospital with injuries.
Dramatic footage captured by a door camera on a house and posted on social media showed a massive explosion that shook a large building in Hayward.
"We were sitting at home and just... everything shook. "Things were falling off the walls, and when we looked at the camera, it was like watching a war video," Brittany Maldonado, who provided footage from the doorbell camera, told ABC 7 News.
A spokesman for "Pacific Gas & Electric Co." said a construction crew damaged an underground gas line around 7:35 a.m. The company said it was not its workers.
Utility workers isolated the damaged line and shut off the gas supply at 9:25 a.m. The explosion occurred shortly after.
More than 1.4 million residents of Sao Paulo were left without power yesterday after strong winds knocked down trees on the Brazilian metropolis's power grid a day earlier, the Associated Press reported.
Local authorities said there were no injuries, but nearly 400 flights were canceled.
Energy company "Enel" did not give a deadline for restoring power. One of its directors, Marcelo Puertash, told reporters that the Italian company has 1,300 people working to solve the problem since winds of around 100 km/h began blowing in Sao Paulo.
The city hall of Sao Paulo reported that 231 trees had fallen as a result of what it called the effects of an extratropical cyclone that formed in southern Brazil. Aviation authorities said most of the canceled flights were from the domestic Congonhas airport, but added that Guarulhos international airport, outside the city, was also affected. Mayor Ricardo Nunes, whose administration is responsible for cutting down trees that fell on the power grid, told reporters on Wednesday night that he had told the company that it was not doing everything it could to fix the problems. "Every time something happens, we are left without electricity," said Nunes, who called the Italian power company "irresponsible." The state of the power grid was even worse on Wednesday, when more than 2 million residents of Sao Paulo were without power. Water utility Sabesp said in a statement yesterday that the lack of electricity is already affecting their services as pumps are not working adequately.