One person dead after explosion damages fertility clinic in California

Police and firefighters are investigating an explosion that killed one person and damaged a fertility clinic in the tiny California city of Palm Springs.

The incident is being investigated as a possible car explosion. Authorities have not disclosed a motive.

A statement by Palm Springs police chief Andy Mills said the blast “appears to be an intentional act of violence” and that several buildings were damaged, some severely.

The city of Palm Springs said on Saturday in a social media post that the explosion happened at 11am local time and that residents were being asked to avoid the area around North Indian Canyon Drive near East Tachevah Drive.

Investigators from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were on their way to the scene to help assess what happened.

Dr Maher Abdallah, who runs the American Reproductive Centres fertility clinic, confirmed that his clinic was damaged. He told The Associated Press in a phone interview that all of his staff were safe and accounted for.

The explosion damaged the practice’s office space, where it conducts consultations with patients, but left the IVF lab and all of the stored embryos there unharmed.

“I really have no clue what happened,” Dr Abdallah said. “Thank God today happened to be a day that we have no patients.”

Nima Tabrizi, 37, of Santa Monica, said he was inside a cannabis dispensary nearby when he felt a massive explosion.

“The building just shook, and we go outside and there’s massive cloud smoke,” Mr Tabrizi said. “Crazy explosion. It felt like a bomb went off. … We went up to the scene, and we saw human remains.”

Aerial footage showed a burned-out car in a car park behind the building that housed the fertility clinic’s office space.

Rhino Williams, 47, was chatting with customers at a restaurant he helps manage inside the Skylark Hotel just over a block away from the scene when he heard a huge boom.

He said everything rattled and he sprinted to the scene to see if anyone was in need of help, thinking a helicopter might have crashed.

He saw a large dark grey plume of smoke and covered his nose with his shirt as he smelled burning plastic and rubber.

He said he saw a building had “blown out” into the street, with bricks and debris scattered everywhere, and spotted a car’s front axle on fire in the building’s car park.

Palm Springs is a tiny community in the desert about a two-hour drive east of Los Angeles. It is known for upscale resorts and a history of celebrity residents.