Motorists from nearby Interstate 280 and eyewitnesses described the towering flames reaching as high as 60 feet into the air more than an hour after the huge fireball ignited with a sudden explosion in the packed residential community, a few miles from San Francisco International Airport.

Yasmine Kury, who lives in an apartment complex near the fire's origin, saw black smoke drift over Highway 280 after a thunderous explosion rocked the Crestmoor community in the area of Skyline Boulevard and Sneath Lane about 6:15 p.m.

"We heard it and felt it, and everyone ran out of the building," Kury said. "It was just a huge explosion."
The noise was so deafening that residents at first thought a plane had crashed, but PG&E officials said one of its natural gas pipelines had erupted, fueling the flames that quickly began devouring homes and forcing a wide-scale evacuation. PG&E however, said the cause of the blaze had yet to be determined even as 200 firefighters from across the Bay Area rushed to help control the huge fire that had already damaged 120 homes.