California

Blue Flash Accompanies So Cal Mystery Boom
By Scott Vanhorne, Victorville Daily Press, August 23, 2000

Sheriff's dispatchers fielded five calls reporting the sound of an explosion early Tuesday morning [Aug 22], but nobody has been able to explain what caused the loud noise. "It sounded like a truck crashing into my house," Richard Corless said. "It was kind of weird." Corless, who lives on Chickasaw Road, said he heard two loud explosions, one about 12:40 a.m. and another at 2:40 p.m. One of the blasts was accompanied by a blue flash of light, he said. Mary Zinser, who also lives on Chickasaw Road, described the sound as a "muffled explosion." "It was enough to wake me and my husband up out of a sound sleep," she said. The two got up to investigate, but they couldn't determine what caused the sound. San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Jennie Risley said dispatchers received five calls about an "explosion" in an area near Tomahawk Road and Tigertrail Road shortly after 3 a.m. Deputies went to the area but were unable to locate evidence of an explosion, she said. "(One caller) thought a helicopter had crashed," Risley said. "That's how loud it was." One caller speculated the sound may have come from a large plane landing at Southern California Logistics Airport, but operations supervisor Greg Heldreth said there were no planes landing that early in the morning. Some thought the sound may have been caused by an electric transformer exploding, but Southern California Edison spokeswoman Beverly Powell said that was impossible. Edison employees did investigate some sparks coming from a transformer on Choco Road near Oneida Road, but that occurred about 1 a.m. and was caused by a bird landing on top of a transformer. "That's the only report we received in Apple Valley," Powell said. "It couldn't have been an explosion."