Heavy black smoke filled the sky above Broco Energy, a heating oil company in Haverhill, Massachusetts, Tuesday as a fire burned several vehicles.
People who live right near the facility said they heard and felt multiple explosions.
"Then it got to the point where the house shook once, twice. The dog started barking," said Adrian Cohen. "The ground shaking -- that's when I saw the smoke. I could see the orange flames through the smoke."
The cause of the massive incident is under investigation, investigators said, but two oil trucks and five other vehicles at Broco caught fire.
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"It's what they consider a fueling station, that's where they fill the trucks that deliver," said Haverhill Fire Chief Robert O'Brien. "The delivery trucks, that's where the incident occurred."
The energy company that specializes in oil and propane is tucked in a tight-knit neighborhood where residents say they've always feared something like this.
"It's not a shock," said Cohen. "You're living next to propane and oil, what's the surprise? This isn't something you'd say, 'I never thought this would happen in my neighborhood,' you'd expect this to happen."
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Neighbors were thankful nobody was injured and their properties were not impacted.
"Today could have been horrible," said Richard Robinson. "What if all these tanks went up? It would have decimated, I don't know, a mile."
A company representative who answered the phone at Broco gave no comment Tuesday.
