Five people were injured, two of them critically, in an explosion Saturday morning at a food truck in a popular shopping and restaurant area in Whittier, authorities said.
Eleven fire and paramedic units were dispatched at 9:17 a.m. to the 6700 block of Greenleaf Avenue, said Martin Rangel, fire dispatch supervisor for the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
“There was some sort of explosion,” but there was no fire when emergency services arrived at the scene at 9:21 a.m., he said.
The Whittier Police Department is investigating the circumstances of the incident and is expected to report the case to Cal/OSHA.
Rangel said the most likely cause of the shooting was a propane tank explosion. Whittier police officials were not immediately available for comment.
Five people were injured, two of them critically, in an explosion at a food truck in Whittier on Saturday, authorities said. Whittier police were on the scene investigating the cause of the blast.
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The National Fire Protection Association says 68 percent of food truck fires are related to leaks or structural failures in propane tanks. As the food truck business has grown over the years, propane-related accidents have periodically occurred, most notably in the summer of 2014, when an explosion and subsequent fire at a food truck in Philadelphia claimed the lives of the truck's owner and her daughter and injured 11 others.
Food truck explosions and fires are rare in California, which has some of the strictest regulations governing the safety of mobile food operations, experts say.
More than 2,700 food trucks and trailers operate in Los Angeles County, said Matt Geller, director of the Southern California Mobile Food Vendors Association. Geller was not aware of the Whittier food truck explosion. He said it did not appear the truck operator was a member of his association.
“It’s a pretty rare event,” Geller said, noting that the last food truck fire he remembers was 10 years ago in Venice. At the same time, he said, “we have a lot of old trucks.”
The five people injured Saturday in Whittier were apparently members of the food truck crew, Rangel said. They were treated at the scene and taken to a hospital; two suffered serious injuries, two had moderate injuries and one had a minor injury, Rangel said.
He did not have details about the food business or the owner of the truck, but workers at nearby businesses said it was connected to a coffee business where the truck was parked in the part of town known as Uptown Whittier.
Video footage showed a small section of Greenleaf Avenue cordoned off Saturday, but by midday, the street was clear, people at nearby businesses said.
