A fire at an ammo disposal business in southeast Texas quickly spread, rocking the community with explosions and the ceaseless popping of live rounds, firefighters told news outlets.
The fire broke out in Montgomery County in the morning on Tuesday, Oct. 10, and firefighters swarmed the scene, according to the Magnolia Fire Department, which arrived to assist county emergency services.
Photos shared by the department show a white sheet metal building engulfed in flames, a thick cloud of smoke billowing out as fire engines spray water from a safe distance.
Many residents could hear and feel the explosions.
“It was a big enough boom the house shook,” one resident said.
“There were five explosions that shook the ground, as I live nearby it was scary, you could hear [ammo] going off,” a resident said on Facebook.
“My husband works around the corner and was seeing it and ammo was flying everywhere,” said another.
Based on the address provided and images shared by fire officials, the building appears to belong to Timberline Environmental Services.
The company provides unexploded ordnance services, meaning it takes live ammunition, or potentially explosives, and dismantles them, according to the company’s website.
There were no injuries, according to Montgomery County Emergency Services.
“We had rounds popping off the whole time, so everyone’s kind of trying to set up at a distance and make sure that they are not getting hit. And as that’s going on, the explosion happened,” Battalion Chief Patrick Schaefer told KTRK. “There was a pretty decent fireball from what I saw. Pieces start flying everywhere, you start seeing people ducking down, a few people hit the ground.”
Officials told KTRK that employees were moving barrels of ammunition when they noticed smoke coming out of one, so they called 911.
Fire officials were well aware of Timberline, what the company does, and had a plan in place if they ever needed to respond, Chief Leonard Mikeska told the outlet.
“Had we not known the hazard here, we could have maybe had some loss of firefighters’ lives,” Mikeska said, according to the outlet.
The building is near Conroe, roughly 40 miles north of Houston.