At 10:18 p.m., witnesses reported hearing a noise described as "a metallic sound and rending timbers, such as made by a falling boom." Immediately afterward, an explosion occurred on the pier and a fire started. Five to seven seconds later a more powerful explosion took place as the majority of the ordnance within and near the SS "E. A. Bryan" detonated in a fireball seen for miles. An Army Air Forces pilot flying in the area reported that the fireball was in diameter. Chunks of glowing hot metal and burning ordnance were flung over into the air. The "E. A. Bryan" was completely destroyed and the "Quinault" was blown out of the water, torn into sections and thrown in several directions; the stern landed upside down in the water away. The Coast Guard fire boat CG-60014-F was thrown upriver, where it sank. The pier, along with its boxcars, locomotive, rails, cargo, and men, was blasted into pieces. Nearby boxcarswaiting within their revetments to be unloaded at midnightwere bent inward and crumpled by the force of the shock. The port's barracks and other buildings and much of the surrounding town were severely damaged. Shattered glass and a rain of jagged metal and undetonated munitions caused many more injuries among military personnel and civilians, although no one outside the immediate pier area was killed. Nearly $9.9 million worth of damage ($ million in ) was caused to U.S. government property. Seismographs at the University of California, Berkeley sensed the two shock waves traveling through the ground, determining the second, larger event to be equivalent to an earthquake measuring 3.4 on the Richter magnitude scale.