that oil spill in california is five times bigger than experts estimated. crews racing to save oil-drenched birds and scoop up gobs of oil from pristine beaches. this after an underground pipeline ruptured. the company says about 80,000 gallons of oil may have spilled on to land. california s governor jerry brown has declared a state of emergency. paul how s the cleanup effort going there? reporter: well, poppy, i think we have some statistical evidence and visual evidence that it s going better today. if you like behind me you can see these oil-stained rocks. yesterday and the day before with every single wave it seemed more oil was poured on to
contaminated medical instruments. they have been sent home testing kits that will be analyzed by the hospital. authorities are trying to determine what caused a massive explosion at an exxon mobil refinery in southern california. the blast so big it registered as a earthquake on the seismograph. there are concerns it could lead to higher gas prices now. abc s cecilia vega has more. this was just a terrible explosion here at the exxon mobil refinery. reporter: the blast ripping through the refinery, leaving a mound of twisted metal and scorched machinery. fire and hazmat crews racing to a blaze that melted steel charred cars and left a layer of ash in its wake. they were advised to stay indoors. felt like we had a car crash or car hit our house. reporter: the neighbors say it felt like a earthquake. heard this loud bang and we weren t sure. we saw the walls cave in. it flexed in. we were like kind of scared. reporter: four workers taken to the hospital with minor injuries.
he believes the plane s recorders are down there. we have very much narrowed down the search area and we are very confident that the signals that we are detecting are from the black box. abbott was referring to the four pings picked up between thursday and saturday. a fifth was picked up using a sonobuoy. but after analysis, the search coordinator now says it is unlikely to be related to the aircraft black boxes. crews racing against the clock to try to hear more signals before they are certain that the batteries powering the black box signals are dead. the signal, from which we are confident are the black boxes are starting to fade and we are hoping to get as much information as we can before the
welcome back to the real story. now that amazing video that i was just showing you before. this is from texas a&m. a college professor watch this. oh, my goodness. his dashboard camera capturing an up close and personal encounter with a cement truck. the collision happened after the truck ran a red light. look at the aftermath. amazingically, both drivers walked away from this with only minor injuries. that s a miracle. fox news alert for you now on the long search for missing malaysian airlines flight 370. crews racing against time to try to locate the wreck after sonar picked up on two more underwater pings now. sonar buoys like this one you re about to see, being deployed to try and help. australia s ocean shield detected the new pings yesterday with its massive sonar scanner.
our breaking news. today s search area is dramatically narrowing. crews racing to hear what they heard over the weekend. what we re talking about is a lot of the technology for picking up these pings, things like the toe pinger locator, hydro phones, passive sonar, all hi-tech ears for picking up certain noises underwater. we ll take a look at the noise makers. we ll find out how they work and what they sound like. reporter: if search teams in the indian ocean are hot on the trail of flight 370 black box this man would know it. he s president of the largest manufacturer of black box pingers. it s activated by this water switch. on this side is the battery. reporter: he invited us to see where they turn out these black boxes.