Hoover Dam explosion rocks tourist site, video shows

Oh, dam!

A large explosion rocked the Hoover Dam during a tour of the facility early Tuesday, dramatic video shows.

A clip posted to Twitter minutes after 10 a.m. local time showed a huge plume of smoke emanating from the dam along the Colorado River on the border of Nevada and Arizona.

“Touring the #hooverdam and heard an explosion #fire,” the visitor, Kristy Hairston, tweeted.

An official giving a tour of the 726-foot concrete structure told visitors to get their cellphones and cameras out to catch footage of the blast.

“There’s just been an incident here at the dam,” the guide said of the explosion and subsequent fire. “We’re going to be leaving now so we don’t get trapped in here.”

It was immediately unclear what led to the explosion, although some of social media speculated one of the facility’s generators may have caught fire and blew up.

Firefighters from Boulder City were en route to the dam after getting an emergency call, department officials in Nevada announced.

But the blaze was put before Boulder City firefighters got to the scene, the department said in a subsequent tweet. No injuries were immediately reported, but the agency referred additional inquiries to Hoover Dam officials.

Messages seeking comment from the Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the dam, were not immediately returned Tuesday.

The Hoover Dam — about 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas — is the most-visited dam worldwide, drawing about 7 million tourists annually, according to its National Park Service website.

Some 5 million barrels of cement and 45 million pounds of reinforced steel were used to build the dam, a five-year undertaking completed in 1936.