Massive fire breaks out at the largest oil-producing facility on the West Coast, near Los Angeles

A large fire broke out Thursday night at a Chevron refinery, in El Segundo, the largest oil-producing facility on the West Coast, officials said.

The fire turned the dark night sky orange in the area surrounding the refinery, with towering flames and billowing plumes of smoke visible from afar, images posted on social media showed and witnesses recalled.

The fire, which is burning about 20 miles south of downtown Los Angeles, has since been contained and no evacuation orders for area residents are in place, the City of El Segundo, said in an online statement. Additionally, there were no injuries or immediate hazards to surrounding areas, El Segundo Fire Department Division Chief Casey Snow told CNN.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my entire life … and it was horrifying,” Howard Thorne, an El Segundo resident told CNN affiliate KABC.

Fire crews arrived at 9:30 p.m. and were able to contain the flames to one section of the refinery. Hours later, at least one tank at the refinery was still burning, Snow said.

Keith Moore, who lives just south of the fire in Manhattan Beach, said he was at home with his family watching TV at the time.

“It was super scary,” Moore told KABC. “All of a sudden it kind of sounded like … plane engines, like almost a plane about to crash, and then a big whoosh and the curtains all flipped up because the windows were slightly open.”

“(It) almost felt like an earthquake because the house shook,” Moore said. “So we didn’t know what was going on.”

The fire is not in a location that poses an immediate risk to air quality for nearby residents, but the full impact of the incident remains unclear, he added.

The fire originated in the southeast corner of the refinery, the City of El Segundo said.

A Chevron spokesperson told CNN the refinery’s fire department and local authorities responded to an “isolated fire” inside the facility, and all personnel are safe and accounted for. A monitoring system at the refinery indicates the fire did not go past the facility’s fence line, the spokesperson said.

Moore said the sky-high flames were about 400 yards from his house, so he and his family packed up their dogs and headed south “just to get out of harm’s way.”

“The whole sky was lit up,” Moore said. “It was like a really, really – brighter than the moon on a really bright day.”

While the fire raged, officials urged residents in the area to stay indoors.

A shelter-in-place order was issued for parts of Manhattan Beach, located about two miles southwest of El Segundo, but was lifted shortly after 1 a.m., according to an emergency notification from the city.

Pacific Coast Highway, which previously saw forced closures earlier this year due to the Palisades Fire, reopened Friday morning after the Chevron fire temporarily closed parts of the 11- mile roadway, according to the City of El Segundo

At the time of the fire, onshore winds from the west-southwest at nearby Los Angeles International Airport were blowing 10 to 15 mph, carrying smoke east. Winds have decreased to 5 mph or less, but are expected to increase again throughout the day, reaching 15 to 20 mph out of the west-southwest, with gusts up to 25 mph possible.

Most surrounding air quality monitors still reported “Good” conditions, though particle levels briefly spiked at a few stations just east of El Segundo. As of Friday morning, the air quality in El Segundo was still listed in “Good” condition.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom have both been briefed on the fire.

“LAFD stands at the ready to assist with any mutual aid request,” Bass wrote on X. “There is no known impact to LAX at this time.”

Meanwhile, Newsom said his “office is coordinating in real time with local and state agencies to protect the surrounding community and ensure public safety.”

Flights at Los Angeles International Airport were not impacted by the fire, a spokesperson for the airport told CNN.

El Segundo Mayor Chris Pimentel told KCAL the city’s fire station is only a quarter mile from the refinery, so crews were able to respond “immediately.”

“Obviously, we are very concerned, and there is a lot of investigative work to be done to see what has happened,” the mayor said.

The El Segundo refinery, built in 1911, processes 276,000 barrels of crude oil daily, the company said on its website.

This story has been updated with additional information.