North Franklin neighborhood still feeling aftershocks
Celeste Van Kirk/Observer-Reporter
Clothes and debris are scattered high in the tree tops near the site of Wednesday’s explosion in North Franklin Township.
Celeste Van Kirk/Observer-Reporter
Clean up beganThursday at the home of Gaylord and Eleanor Rea, whose house was damaged when their neighbor’s home exploded a day earlier.
Tabatha Hurst was leaving work Wednesday when she received a most unsettling phone call from her daughter, Courtney.
“She said, ‘Mom, don’t freak out. The house behind us blew up,'” Tabatha recalled Thursday morning.
Somehow, Mom did not freak out, but she was eager to get back to her house on Park Avenue in North Franklin Township. Extremely eager. “My first thought was to see if my kids are OK, if my husband was OK.”
Courtney and the rest of her family – husband Juddy, son Ryan and their dog – were inside when an explosion obliterated the residence at 100 Park Lane, downhill from them.
The Hursts were among dozens of nearby residents who sustained damage to their buildings and/or psyches from the blast, which occurred at 3:50 p.m. Wednesday, tearing a house asunder and scattering debris high and wide. Some of it was visible in treetops 200 feet high.
Columbia Gas took responsibility for the explosion, in which five individuals – the homeowner, a neighbor and three firefighters – were hospitalized for injuries or medical conditions. Firefighters had arrived before the explosion, when the homeowner, Deborah Braden, reported that she smelled gas.
Courtney Hurst, 15 going on 16, a student at Trinity High School across the road, was visibly upset Thursday, 18 hours after the explosion.
“I didn’t know what had happened,” she recounted. “It sounded like an earthquake and the house was shaking. Literally, everything came crashing down. There’s a hole in the wall in my room and there’s nothing on the walls.
“I was lying on the couch, where nothing fell on me. But if I were sitting somewhere else …”
“This has devastated and traumatized me and traumatized my daughter,” Tabatha said. “She’s a little scared to go in her room.”
Among other things, the family had a back window destroyed, their back deck lifted up and badly damaged, and a wounded patriarch. Tabatha said her spouse, Juddy, had his leg cut by loosed doorway frames.
“We have a lot of damage,” she said. “Broken glass, windows that won’t shut. It’s a mess.”
Tabatha and her family at least have a safe haven. They are staying temporarily with her parents.
The Iams family at 270 Park Ave. is thankful none of them were home when the explosion happened, though their three cats and five gerbils seem traumatized, they said.
Cindy Iams was at work nearby when she heard the boom.
“I could see the smoke and see the debris in the air,” she said.
She knew it was close to her home, but her husband, Scott Iams, and their daughter, Abby, weren’t home either. Abby’s bedroom had multiple, significant cracks in the walls and ceiling and shattered glass everywhere from the window.
“I couldn’t sleep in there last night,” Abby said. “I’m too afraid the ceiling’s going to to come down.”
Brian Wylie, at 262 Park Ave., said he’s thankful his wife had back problems that day. She left their house and went to the chiropractor.
“It’s amazing no one died in this,” he said. “If you don’t believe in God, after this you probably should now.”
Wylie was at work when he got a phone call about the explosion. He said his wife called him to say, “Debbie’s house exploded.”
Their two dogs were inside his house during the explosion. He said a piece of large debris struck his door, and the dogs got out of the house. They ran around the neighborhood scared until a neighbor took them in, he said.
Wylie believes his roof lifted up and came back down in the explosion. He also has a crack in the foundation, and his back deck is swaying. He said that while he’s nervous his house will be condemned due to the damage, he’s also amazed it was even still standing after the explosion.
“I’m glad my house was built as good as it was and for the tree coverage,” he said.
Up the hill, at the intersection with West Maiden Street, Cyril Walther lost a large plate-glass window and a night of pizza-making. The temporary closure, however, shouldn’t have happened.
Cyril, 76, the owner of Walther’s Hill House, said Columbia Gas told him Wednesday it was shutting off gas to about 60 area customers, and his shop was among them. Then he said he found out Thursday morning he had not lost gas service.
“Our parking lot was filled with vehicles of firefighters, police and emergency personnel,” said Walther, whose eatery operates from 5 to 9:30 p.m. “We could have opened … well, maybe at 8.
He appeared to be only mildly disturbed by that, though, and resumed the pizza-flipping Thursday evening. There was some damage to an upstairs bathroom as well, including a twisted pipe that created a leak.
Walther, who lives in a house behind the shop, said the blast knocked a number of his wife’s knickknacks off walls, some of them pricey. He also owns rental properties nearby that experienced damage.
Down the hill, and not far away from the explosion site, American Legion Post 175 sits inside the city of Washington line. It escaped unscathed – “to the best of my knowledge,” commander Dave Staniszewski said. He said pavilions on a hill behind the Legion building “have to be checked” along with the roof.
Actually, the blast did cause a mild disturbance at the Legion. “Some beer bottles fell off the bar,” Staniszewski said.
Employees from Samson Glass & Mirror Inc., in Eighty Four, came to the neighborhood after work hours Thursday to help the families board up broken windows and doors.
“There were shards of glass everywhere,” said Melissa Metteson, president of the company. “Since windows and glass are what we do, we thought we could be of some help.”
They were out there until 11 p.m. that night boarding up five homes affected by the explosion.
Katie Anderson contributed to this story.