Around 700 barrels of crude oil gushed into a Southern California waterway on Thursday morning, after a pipeline burst close to the city of Ventura. The pipeline burst at around 5.30am, causing approximately 30,000 gallons of oil to flow into the nearby Prince Barranca, a small waterway that leads to the Pacific.

The pipeline was soon shut down and depressurised, but gravity temporarily maintained the flow of crude, which ran half a mile down the barranca. Fire crews were using bulldozers to bolster an existing natural basin and stop the oil reaching the ocean, officials told the Los Angeles Times.