Food truck explodes in Texas town, damaging buildings a block away, officials say

A series of explosions that began with a food truck blowing up rocked a city block in Texas early Thursday morning, officials say.

The food truck exploded shortly after 6 a.m. in San Marcos, Texas, a town just northeast of San Antonio, firefighters said in a news conference on Facebook. About 20 minutes later, another explosion happened as firefighters were battling a small fire, officials said.

No one was injured.

“Fortunately, our firefighters arrived on scene, made an initial attempt to extinguish the fire, realized they were in too close of proximity and pulled back prior to the second explosion,” San Marcos Fire chief Les Stephens said, according to KSAT.

But the blasts damaged at least seven buildings in the city, including shattering windows of a coffee shop a block away, officials said. The explosion, which happened at Allo Eatery food truck park, also damaged three other food trucks, KSAT reported.

While the city initially tweeted that a propane tank caused the blast, firefighters later said they don’t yet know what caused the explosions. They remain under investigation.

The explosions happened near the campus of Texas State University.

Skylar Jaramillo, a student at the university, told KXAN she thought her apartment building was collapsing.

“We were all asleep when we heard this like giant crash and honestly a lot of us thought it was the structural integrity of the building,” Jaramillo told KXAN. “We were freaking out like, ‘Oh my god, the building is falling,’ and then we looked outside and see this huge fireball.”

This story was originally published November 14, 2019 at 10:47 AM.