An excavator clearing debris at the fire this morning. | John Ross Ferrara

An ammonia tank, which had laid dormant since Eureka Ice and Cold Storage went out of business roughly a decade ago, exploded this morning as firefighters worked to clear debris from the scene of the warehouse fire along the Eureka Waterfront.

Humboldt Bay Fire Battalion Chief Chris Jelinek told the Outpost that a private company had been brought in years ago to remove all the ammonia from the company’s tanks, but that this one had somehow been missed.

“After eureka ice and cold storage went out of business, a private contractor was brought in to remove all of the ammonia from the system, and the case was that almost all of the gas had been removed,” Jelinek said. “Unfortunately for us today there was a small pressurized vessel, which for whatever reason at the time the gas had been removed, was undetected. Today as the heavy equipment operators were using the buckets on their excavator to pull down the walls and other damaged materials, they grabbed onto that cylinder, ruptured it and there was a blast and a release of ammonia gas.”

Jelinek said that no one was hurt in the blast, but that it was a frightening moment.

“Kind of a scary deal, a little bit of a pucker factor,” he said. “Thankfully nobody was hurt, no injuries, no exposure to the gas itself. But these fires are dangerous enough without the added potential of a container blowing up and releasing a toxic gas.”

This morning’s fire. | HBF.