BLUE ISLAND, Ill. -- An explosion and fire rocked a south suburban Chicago oil refinery Tuesday afternoon, severely burning three people and shooting 'balls of flame' 300 feet in the air, officials said.
Firefighters isolated the fire to one gasoline tank at the Martin Oil Refinery by keeping nearby tanks cool and out of danger, said Mary Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for the Cook County Sheriff's Department.
'The feeling is it will be taken care of sooner than they originally expected,' she said.
The explosion at 2:17 p.m. apparently erupted when gasoline spilled while being transferred underground from the nearby Clark Oil Refinery to Martin, said Cook County Sheriff's Sgt. Pete Staley.
'There was a mishap of sorts, a spillage,' he said, adding he did not know what ignited the fuel.
Officials for the company, based in nearby Alsip, would not discuss the fire Tuesday evening and would not say whether the victims were employees.
Authorities from Blue Island and Alsip were fighting the fire.
Two of the burned men, Rudy Herrington, Frankfort, in his 50s, and Bruce Guttke, Tinley Park, in his 20s, were in critical condition at Loyola University Medical Center.
Herrington had burns over 60 percent of his body and Guttke was burned over 15 percent of his body, the hospital reported.
Steve Sumokowski, of Chicago Ridge, was listed in critical condition at Cook County Hospital with burns over 85 percent of his body.
Jerome Koch, 24, who works at Witt Chevrolet car dealership near the refinery, said the building shook when the explosion took place and 'there were balls of flame flying high into the air.'
Paul Branch, 20, Oak Lawn, who was in a friend's house two blocks from the refinery, said, 'It was like someone threw a stick of dynamite in his back yard.'
Authorities evacuated employees from nearby businesses and several homes in the area, but there was no immediate information on how many people were affected by the explosion that shot flames 300 feet above the refinery, officials said. Traffic in the area also was diverted.
