9-1-1 Season 10: How did LA get a volcano?

It may be a while before viewers learn for sure how a volcano erupted beneath the surface of the California city. But this is how “9-1-1” set up its latest major crisis in the Season 10 premiere.

Land of lava

The first scene of Season 10 opened with a multi-vehicle emergency that got much worse after a huge hole opened up and left passengers in great danger. Led by Chimney (Kenneth Choi), the 118 firefighters helped save everyone without serious casualties – and a “Happy 10 Years” balloon recognized the start of the important season for the love drama.

But the team was far from done with a mysterious act of God. With Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) now in charge of the 9-1-1 dispatch center, she is invited to detail among emergency response and city officials to detail the incident led by the chief executive officer of the Office of Emergency Management Ty Worrell (Rob Huebel) – a director pissed off wondering how something of this magnitude happened without even a single warning sign.

However, Maddie noticed a 20% increase in emergency calls in the sinkhole area before the incident, so she was given days of call review to find a pattern or clue to what’s going on.

The next day, an aquarium tank emergency went off after the water began to show high figures of proteins and apparently turned to acid, leaving one snorkeler in danger. The crew rescued a man who was in danger and his body began to burn from the water, but management made sure there were no signs of filtration issues from the tank’s main water line – “One hell of a glitch,” Chimney said.

That night, Maddie’s investigation and a suggestion from Chimney lead her to believe that something is poisoning the water in a way that causes frightening symptoms, paranoia and dead plants and animals. The aquarium crisis was another connection. She called Worrell to warn that she believed something bigger was coming; what exactly? She still can’t tell.

The next day, he called asking what she knew after a strange noise started coming from the sink hole. Maddie also realized that the circumference of the sinkhole was getting bigger, another sign of impending disaster. But it was the sound of the tea kettle that was a big sign of what was to come. Chim told the responding officers to make sure they didn’t panic, as one of the crew members noticed chemicals and sound waves getting hotter inside the hole.

As the firefighters prepared to help a scientist get down and take a closer look, a huge tremor went off. Then a bigger one and an explosion of lava started spewing up, and apparently landing on Ty at the end of the episode, starting the tragedy that was to come in later episodes.

“That’s not a sinkhole. That’s a volcano!” Hen said before the end of the first scene.

The Athena Detective

While the firefighters took on the biggest mystery, Angela Bassett’s big new job seemed to be off to a great start, with her most interesting case to date after being promoted to detective involving the kidnapping of a dog named Pickles. But after she was fired at the end of last season, she welcomed the slow start after 30 years as a patrol officer – with a little self-sabotaging getting in the way too.

Mae told her to go ahead and ask for a bigger case, before an injured man with a nasty burn was dumped outside the hospital – time to step up!

The ads led to a construction site where some of the workers were also shot. She seemed to be solving her first case and earning congratulations from the department after the supervisor admitted a botched construction accident and the crew dropped the main victim’s body to cover their tracks.

But the celebration was over quickly for Athena. She received word from the hospital that the victim died of his injuries, although a fellow detective tried to comfort her that she had gotten justice for him. Athena thought there could be more to the story though.

Unable to let her hunt go, Athena learned that the victim’s burns did not match the guilty supervisor’s story. And she found security camera footage showing the victim leaving a jewelry store. She accessed the store’s safe and found it empty, with only a ladder into an underground hole that robbers had clearly dug to steal the treasures inside.

Of course, Athena entered the tunnel to investigate, just as the secret of the sink hole was about to erupt. While she was in there taking a look, the big quake started and caused a blockage inside the tunnel – apparently leaving Athena trapped underground at the end of the episode.

Daddy’s drama

The last time we saw Buck (Oliver Stark), he had learned that his biological son Theo had lost his adoptive parents, leaving him as the child’s sole caretaker.

Three months later and between sinkhole emergencies, Buck ended up in the ER with serious facial injuries — and said he tripped and injured himself at home. Theo accidentally called Eddie (Ryan Guzman), signaling him to come help his friend.

The ER doctor noted that this was his fourth non-working emergency room visit in three months, while he has had seizures with the child. Buck told Eddie that he would let Theo check out “Nacho Libre” and accidentally punched Buck in his excitement.

Eddie seemed worried that the situation might be getting out of hand, and those worries grew more after dinner at his house. Theo refused to sit and eat, just playing and destroying things around the house while the others had dinner. Then, in a brutal but unexpected move, Theo runs into Eddie’s son Christopher (Gavin McHugh) and knocks him into the ground.

Looks like Theo needs some discipline and Eddie might have to give Buck the tough talk to make it happen. If they survive the volcano, of course.

“9-1-1” airs Thursdays on ABC and streams the next day on Hulu.