Claremont, CA – A house exploded in the north end of the Village, sending flames and smoke billowing into the Claremont air.
Police received multiple calls from nearby residents just before 3 p.m. on the 200 block of 12th Street, according to Lt. Karlan Bennett of the Claremont Police Department. When police arrived within minutes, they found the house fully engulfed in flames and neighbors trying to fight the fire with garden hoses.
Lisa Pritchard was walking her dog in the area when she heard the blast.
I just thought the world came to an end, she said, noting she then saw a woman running down the street saying there was an explosion. I just thought we were in a nuclear war.
Nobody was home at the time of the explosion, Lt. Bennett said. The cause is still under investigation.
Ron Podojil has lived in the house for around 11 years.
“I’m feeling kind of numb, simply because you don’t know what to do next,” he said as he surveyed the remnants of his home.
Mr. Podojil said he got a call on his cell phone from a neighbor saying his house was on fire and raced to the scene from his work in San Dimas. He had no indication as to what caused the blaze, but said it may have started in the back of the house.
“Obviously, it looks gas-related is what I’m assuming, but you just don’t know,” he said. “What else could it be? There’s nothing else in the house, there’s no propane, I just don’t have any of that. Everything is gas or electric.”
Allison Dollman, who is visiting Claremont from Toledo, Ohio to tour the Claremont Colleges with her son Nicholas, was staying in a back house on the property when the explosion occurred. The casita she was staying in was being rented out as an AirBnb, she said.
She said the front house, imploded on itself. She called the police, and then scaled the back fence into an adjacent property to escape the flames.
The flames were getting higher and higher and I thought I really had no choice, Ms. Dollman said.
Twelfth Street was blocked off between Harvard and Yale, and onlookers were shepherded from the scene by Claremont police officers as a precaution. Pieces of debris and broken glass littered 12th street and into opposite properties.
Another resident, who identified himself only as Ron, told the COURIER that the explosion blew debris outward into the street.
It was huge, he said. It just looked like brown, dried dirt.
Adjacent properties were also affected by the blast. Baba Elefante, who lives in a back house facing the property, noted the explosion shattered his windows.
I was sitting doing work and it sounded like a bomb going off, he said.
Mr. Podojil lives in the home with another person who is currently in Europe. He spent Monday evening talking with fire investigators and trying to sift through the rubble.
“You look at it and think wow, somebody really could have gotten hurt, and nobody did and that’s a blessing,” he said. “We’ll just see now what happens and what they come up with, because it’s just very odd to me. It just doesn’t seem like this only happens to other people.”