Expand<\/a><\/p>\nThe sights and sounds of the Sansinena blast, though, still reverberate for those who witnessed it.<\/p>\n
Some of those stories will be shared during Saturday\u2019s event in San Pedro in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the disaster.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a retired police officer who was working that night,\u201d said Megan Barnes, a San Pedro Heritage Museum board member. Those at the local IHOP, she said, thought a car had crashed into the building when the explosion occurred.<\/p>\n
The museum has also collected memories from those in the community that will be shared at the event, Barnes said, and they will be made available online also.<\/p>\n
Among those who will narrate the program is Lou Roupoli, who was a young Los Angeles city firefighter at the time who was born and raised in San Pedro. He later retired as an L.A. assistant fire chief and still lives in San Pedro.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just finishing up my (one-year) probation and working at Fire Station 45 on Olympic and Crenshaw (boulevards),\u201d he recalled about that night in a telephone interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe alarm came in, and normally those alarms were short,\u201d he said. But not this one, Roupoli added \u2014 it \u201cwent on and on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fire engine after fire engine in the vicinity, about 25, were called in to respond to the explosion, Roupoli recalled.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe rode the back of the tail onto the 10 and the 110 (freeways) and we\u2019re flying,\u201d he said. \u201cAs we got off onto Gaffey Street, I remember there was glass in the middle of the street. The windows on all the commercial buildings, from getting off the freeway to 22nd Street, were all blown out. It was just unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n
When they reached 22nd and Miner streets, they could see \u201cthis super tanker and the middle of the ship was on the dock, and I thought, \u2018How could this have happened?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThe bow and stern were in the water, facing the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n
A piece also landed on top of the guard shack, which was on fire.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was laying on a 2.5-inch hose for hours, just pumping water and foam onto this thing and all around me were these rivets,\u201d which had flown off the ship, he said. They were solid steel, measuring about 2 by 1 inches. He still has one and it is among items that will be shared at the event on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was there for three days until the fire was out,\u201d Roupoli said.<\/p>\n
The destruction of the vessel and the terminal was massive \u2014 amounting to $21.6 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many still recall the explosion in the Port of Los Angeles that is coming up on its 50th…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[7,3172,4064,131,133,132,47,137,100,1439],"class_list":["post-519879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-california","tag-harbor-area","tag-local-history","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-county","tag-news","tag-san-pedro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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