A doorbell camera caught a house exploding in northern California after a construction crew apparently damaged a gas line, the blast injuring six people and resulting in a three-alarm blaze.
“Our neighbor’s house exploded,” a shocked resident is heard saying.
The Alameda County Fire Department reported that 75 firefighters responded to the resulting fire, which leveled three buildings and also damaged some adjacent homes.
“It was scary,” Christian Maldanado, the neighbor who shared the video from her home’s camera, told KTVU. “It was like a scene from Hollywood. It was unreal.”
Six people were taken to local hospitals, according to the department. Pacific Gas & Electric told KTVU that three of the company’s workers were among the injured. The three other people injured were residents of the home that exploded and are being treated for third-degree burns, according to a family member.
The explosion occurred Thursday in Ashland near the city of Hayward in the East Bay, about 15 miles south of Oakland.
According to Fox News:
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. was alerted around 7:35 a.m. that a construction crew — not with the utility — had damaged an underground gas line. Utility workers arrived to isolate the damaged line, but gas was leaking from various locations. Workers stopped the flow of gas at 9:25 a.m., and the explosion followed shortly afterward.
Alameda County Deputy Fire Chief Ryan Nishimoto told news outlets that three structures on two separate lots were severely damaged.
Some of the firefighters who arrived on the scene had to initially back off when they felt electric shocks from the power lines that had collapsed on the site.
“Every window in my house was blown open,” a local resident, identified only as Deborah, told KTVU. “There are cracks in the ceiling. My house is destroyed.”
The exact cause of the explosion is under investigation.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
