As I was watching the Democratic primary wind down with one candidate holding on by a string and the other waving and getting “fired up” a whole other kind of “firing” was going down. I had read about this a short time earlier, but then CNN switched to the blaze at Universal Studios caused when a pressurized cylinder exploded near the video vault of the Universal Studios back lot.
The explosion occurred around 2:30 PM PST and was finally contained just shy of two hours later with reports of at least two firefighters being injured. However, this is all a result of a fire that began around 4:45 a.m. in the morning and was thought to have been contained by 9 a.m. Unfortunately that was not the case as the fire burned the vault containing hundreds of videos as well as destroying several movie sets and the King Kong exhibit.
Studio chief Ron Meyer told CNN, “Fortunately, nothing irreplaceable was lost… The video library was affected and damaged, but our main vault of our motion picture negatives was not.”
Lost was the set to Clint Eastwood’s upcoming feature The Changeling, an area called “Courthouse Square” and two of the eight locations used by the CBS series “Ghost Whisperer” were affected. “Courthouse Square” is apparently a location where numerous movies have been shot, including several scenes from Back to the Future.
As of this posting firefighters still have not determined what started the early morning fire. Below is some raw footage found on YouTube.
