Forecast for Los Angeles: Warm With the Overwhelming Smell of Burnt Monkey

A lot of cool stuff went up in flames at Universal Studios today:

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. -- One of Hollywood's largest movie studios starred in a disastrous sequel Sunday as a fire ripped through a lot at Universal Studios, destroying a set from "Back to the Future," a King Kong exhibit and a streetscape seen frequently in movies and TV shows.

Eleven hours the blaze broke out, an explosion inside a burning videotape warehouse injured a firefighter and a sheriff's deputy, officials said.

Bulldozers that had been removing burning debris from the warehouse and opening it up for streams of water when something blew up. The dozer crews were ordered to pull back, and ambulances were being readied to take the two victims to burn units at nearby hospitals.

A bulldozer "ran across something in the video vault, and something exploded," a county fire inspector told KFWB. The inspector said the injuries were minor.

City paramedics have reported via fire radios that a female sheriff's deputy suffered a head injury and was blown off her feet, and rolled ten feet down an embankment, when an explosion rocked the burning videotape vault at Universal Studios. That deputy was reported to be conscious and alert, but had her spine strapped down and was rushed to a hospital.

Earlier Sunday, eight firefighters had suffered minor injuries, as one of the longest-running building fires in Los Angeles history flared for more than 11 hours....

The blaze broke out on a sound stage featuring New York brownstone facades around 4:30 a.m. at the 400-acre property, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Michael Freeman said. The fire was contained to the lot, but about 400 firefighters were still trying to put it out several hours later.

The cause of the fire is under investigation. Damage was expected to be in the millions of dollars.

The iconic courthouse square from "Back to the Future" was destroyed, and the famous clock tower that enabled Michael J. Fox's character to travel through time was damaged, fire officials said. Two mock New York and New England streets used both for movie-making and as tourist displays were a total loss, Los Angeles County Fire Inspector Darryl Jacobs said.

An exhibit housing a mechanically animated King Kong that bellows at visitors on a tram also was destroyed.

They're frantically rewriting the script for the backlot tram tour:

"On your right, that's where the "Back to the Future" Courthouse Square should have been. It looks like one of Doc Brown's experiments went really, really bad.

On your left, that's where New York street should have been (though it now looks a lot like the Bronx) *pause for laughter*.

And over here, King Kong's crematorium. We will now pause for a moment of silence in honor of the big fella. Don't worry, that smell will come out of your clothes after a few washings."