Explosions Rattle 2 Neighborhoods : Ventura: One guts a truck, the other blows a hole in a garage door. There are no injuries. Devices seem similar.

Explosions rocked two Ventura neighborhoods early Wednesday, destroying a parked vehicle and blasting a hole in an apartment complex.

Officials declined to speculate on whether the blasts, which were eight miles apart, were the work of the same bomber. But they said that at both scenes they had found explosive devices made with fire extinguishers and apparently set off with pipe bombs.

Joe Braga, a detective and bomb technician with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, said he had not seen such devices before, but called them very dangerous.

“They are destructive,” Braga said. “They create a lot of fragments, a lot of shrapnel.”

Shortly before 12:15 a.m. Wednesday, a bomb exploded inside the cab of a 1985 Toyota pickup truck parked in the 6700 block of Partridge Drive, shattering the windows and gutting the interior.

About 20 minutes later, a similar device ripped a hole the size of a telephone book through the garage door of an apartment house in the 3100 block of Harbor Boulevard.

No one was injured in either explosion.

Joe Castellano, 19, went to bed after Tuesday’s fireworks, but was roused from his sleep when the bomb went off in the alley behind the five-unit apartment complex on Harbor Boulevard.

“It was a thundering noise,” Castellano, said. “It sounded like those large fireworks that blow up in midair. It shook the house pretty good.”

The bomb that hurled the back windshield of 21-year-old Daniel Bradley’s truck 30 feet and sent his side mirror shooting 25 feet through a neighbor’s window charred the truck’s interior. Many neighbors called the midnight explosion deafening.

“Everybody I talked to said it sounded like the space shuttle was landing,” said Al Beridon, 52, who lives a few houses away from Bradley.

A 21-year-neighbor, who identified herself only as Lorrie, had just come home from work when the blast occurred.

“It felt like a sonic boom, but a little closer,” Lorrie said. “I thought something had hit the house.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Bradley, the owner of a pool service, and a few neighbors gathered around his truck to assess the damage. Bradley, his voice laden with resignation, called the truck “gone” and said he plans to sell off what parts he can. He said he can’t understand why a bomber would blow up his car.

“I have no idea, none,” he said.

Bradley slept through the explosion, but was jarred from his sleep by a neighbor’s screams.

“Flames were just billowing out of [the truck],” Bradley said. “I grabbed a hose and we put it out.”

Matt Harvill, a Ventura Police Department detective, said his office so far hasn’t received any tips on the bombings and has no suspects.

Harvill said the only element tying the two blasts is that similar devices--fire extinguishers with crude, and most likely pipe-bomb-like explosives--were placed at the two locations. According to bomb experts, fire extinguisher contents are under a lot of pressure, which when exposed to flame can create a powerful blast.

“This wasn’t advanced pyrotechnics,” Harvill said.