LANGLEY (NEWS1130) -  One man has serious burns after a massive chemical fire and explosion at a trucking company on the Surrey-Langley border this afternoon.  Mounties don’t think he has life-threatening injuries.

This all happened just after 2:30 p.m.  The area had to be evacuated temporarily as crews from the Township of Langley, City of Langley and Surrey tried to contain the blaze.

Only a quarter of the Ken Johnson’s trucking building is left standing.  Township of Langley Assistant Fire Chief Bruce Ferguson says firefighters were dealing with many explosions. 

“It was reasonably tough to battle because we didn’t know what we were dealing with, especially with the amount of chemicals and what not.  We were more concerned with the surrounding businesses and the people, so we had the RCMP help us evacuate.”

“Massive flames to almost the top of the building that we can see.  High billowing black smoke.  It was actually an explosion,” said one office worker nearby.

“You can hear it constantly, the popping.  It sounded like something landed on our roof but it was the explosion from the fire a block away,” said one man.

“It’s a pretty big fire.  They have every police car, every fire truck.  They have a lot of different zones coming here.  It’s not just Fort Langley,” said another witness.

There was a power outage in the area so BC Hydro crews were called out as was FortisBC.  WorkSafeBC is also investigating.

At one point the Golden Ears Bridge was closed by RCMP.

“There’s chunks of large building standing in weird angles all the way around.  Fire crews are still working on putting out the hot spots and a lot of that area is blocked off right now.  There’s a bit of chemical leak and they’re worried it’ll come in contact with people,” says News1130‘s Kim Seale.

We received many tweets from people saying they can see thick, black smoke from as far Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam as well as Pitt Meadows and Langley.

No word what caused the explosion but there are suggestions it was due to a welder’s torch.