Rescue teams work on the site of an explosion in a fuel station in Rome on July 4, 2025. At least ten people were injured in an explosion with the blast heard across the Italian capital. Neighbouring buildings were evacuated following the explosion, which occurred shortly after 8am during what media reports said was a refueling operation. (Photo by Andreas SOLARO \/ AFP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
The explosion sent a fireball and thick black smoke into the air, and was heard on the other side of Rome, shaking windows and causing some residents to worry that a bomb had gone off.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe explosion was really powerful. I felt my skin burning,\u201d Michele Secu, a 23-year-old who worked at the now-destroyed sports centre, told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was 15 metres from the petrol station\u2026 it exploded in front of me. I don\u2019t know how I managed to run, to escape,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Before the explosion, emergency services were called to investigate the gas leak and had evacuated the immediate area, including a children\u2019s summer camp.<\/p>\n
Twenty-one of the 45 injured were from the emergency services, including 12 police officers, Rome police told AFP.<\/p>\n
READ ALSO:\u00a0<\/strong>[UPDATED] Major Blast At South Iran Port, Kills Four, Injures More Than 500<\/p>\nTwo men were hospitalised and in life-threatening condition, one with burns on 55 percent of his body, local health authorities told the AGI news agency.<\/p>\n
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Like A Bomb<\/h2>\n
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Fabio Balzani, head of the sports centre, said if the fire had occurred just a bit later, it could have been disastrous.<\/p>\n
Some 60 children had been expected at the summer camp, and around 120 people booked to use the swimming pool as relief from a heatwave that has baked the city for the past week.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would have been a massacre, a catastrophe,\u201d Balzani told AFP.<\/p>\n
Andrea Quattrocchi, the local chief of the Carabinieri police force, also said the timely intervention of his team was crucial.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey extracted a person alive from a burning car,\u201d who was taken to hospital, he told reporters.<\/p>\n
Witnesses said an ambulance exploded in the fire.<\/p>\n
Ennio Aquilino, regional director of the Lazio fire department, said the petrol station explosion was caused by a \u201cBLEVE\u201d \u2014 a boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion\u2014of the liquefied natural gas.<\/p>\n
A BLEVE is caused by the rapid vaporisation of a pressurised liquid, normally when the vessel containing it is ruptured in some way.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe effect is as if a bomb has gone off,\u201d Aquilino told reporters.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni offered her sympathy to the injured and praised first responders for their quick work that helped avoid \u201cthis tragic event from having even more serious consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n
AFP<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nenergy,Explosion,fire,Italy
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Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dozens Hurt In Fuel Station Blast Heard Across Rome \u2022 Channels Television \u00a0 \u00a0 A huge explosion at a petrol station in a Rome suburb on Friday left 45 people hurt, two of them seriously, and rattled windows across the Italian capital. The blast around 8:20 am (0620 GMT) was preceded by a fire caused […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":231828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[173],"tags":[299,300,301,302],"class_list":["post-231827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-energy","tag-explosion","tag-fire","tag-italy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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