A small transformer explosion started a fire at the Hoover Dam late Tuesday morning.
Despite large gray clouds of smoke billowing out of a building near the base of the dam, the fire was quickly extinguished, officials said.
A transformer at the dam caught fire shortly after 10 am, the Bureau of Reclamation said in a statement. By 10.30am the fire had been extinguished by members of the bureau and the Hoover fire brigade.
No one was injured in the incident, according to the bureau.
The Bureau of Reclamation is investigating the incident.
The fire had been extinguished before units with the Boulder City Fire Department arrived on the scene.
The Boulder City Fire Department headed to the historic dam around 10.30am local time. No additional information about the incident has been released.
A video of the sudden explosion shared to Twitter by a tourist quickly captured circulated the Internet.
The footage shows massive gray clouds of smoke coming from part of the 726-foot tall dam as a person in the background can be heard saying, ‘My goodness, something has just blown up.’
A second video shared to TikTok shows a different angle of the explosion, which social media users speculate occurred at the dam’s generators or turbines.
The Hoover Dam impounds the largest US reservoir, Lake Mead, where human remains were discovered earlier this year as drought caused its water levels hit a historic low.
The historic dam, located about 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas, was constructed during the Great Depression. Its situated along the Colorado River on the border of Nevada and Arizona and receives millions of tourists each year, making it the most-visited dam in the world.
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