By Paul Larocco
The Press Enterprise
NORCO, Calif. — Charles Byrd was eating breakfast Monday morning when he heard a window-rattling explosion coming from his backyard.
“I thought was (an) earthquake,” said Byrd, who lives on Norco’s Rocky View Drive. “A big boom!”
As it turned out, it wasn’t the ground jolting Byrd and his neighbors. It was the ammunition stored in his backyard shed exploding as a result of a quick-moving fire.
Norco firefighters responded at 10:36 a.m. and found the 750-square-foot storage shed engulfed in flames. They initially fought the blaze from a distance and evacuated nearby residents, unsure of how much ammunition was inside.
From there, things were “smooth as silk,” said Capt. Tim Bruner. In 40 minutes, firefighters limited damage to the shed and its contents. No one was injured.
“It was very loud,” Bruner said. “It sounded like little bombs going off.”
Byrd, a former recreational shooter who did his own reloading, kept shotgun shells and smokeless gunpowder in the shed. All of the material was legally stored, officials said.
After the fire and the explosions subsided, the sheriff’s bomb squad inspected the debris as a precaution. Byrd lamented his biggest loss: a 1974 Chevy Nova he had been restoring.
“It was almost complete,” he said.
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