I live in SoCal and was at home 18.25 nautical miles from Sansinena when she blew up at the fuel pier at San Pedro, 12/17/1976 at about 7:38 pm. Three fourths of that distance is across water, so the sound and blast wave really carried well to where I was. It didn't rattle my windows, it shook them. Hard. The 'boom' of the explosion was audible. It was very clear that something very bad had just happened somewhere fairly close by. My father, who as a WWII vet, was even closer to it than I (about 10 statute miles) and he said he thought a 1000 pound bomb had gone off near him.
I do not remember if it was immediately carried on local news, but I sure never forgot the event. As far as I know the Maritime museum in San Pedro still has an exhibit about it. It rained steel rivets across the channel into the residential area.
Rather than post pix, the two links below are to Google searches for the event. There are many very good pix of the fire and wreckage, though some of the pix are in do***ents such as the PDF files of the accident report. In both links, the best results are near the tops of the search returns.
Google image search for S.S. Sansinena explosion
Google text search for S.S. Sansinena explosion
I do not remember if it was immediately carried on local news, but I sure never forgot the event. As far as I know the Maritime museum in San Pedro still has an exhibit about it. It rained steel rivets across the channel into the residential area.
Rather than post pix, the two links below are to Google searches for the event. There are many very good pix of the fire and wreckage, though some of the pix are in do***ents such as the PDF files of the accident report. In both links, the best results are near the tops of the search returns.
Google image search for S.S. Sansinena explosion
Google text search for S.S. Sansinena explosion
