Lancaster, PA- An early morning explosion Friday leveled a carwash just south of Lancaster, and the blast woke up people two miles away.
The preliminary estimate of damage in Engleside was $1.5 million, according to West Lampeter Township police.
The blast at 3:30 a.m. blew apart the carwash at 1004 Willow Street Pike, just south of the bridge over the Conestoga River. The busy north-south road was closed for hours.
The explosion propelled debris across the street. It also blew open doors and knocked items off the walls of nearby homes in a mobile home park.
No one was hurt by the blast, but it severely damaged a mobile home and forced a couple and their four children to find other lodging.
Trooper Brian Herr, a state police fire marshal, said police are investigating the cause.
An accidental gas leak at a propane gas tank was one contributing cause, investigators said.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a hazardous materials team, township emergency management and other emergency service responders also were at the scene.
Herr said the seismograph at Millersville University, about four miles away, recorded the tremors from the explosion.
A number of mobile homes in Engleside Mobile Home Park just south of the carwash were damaged by the explosion, Herr said.
Kevin and Melissa Marron were asleep in their home on Lot 19 when they heard a loud bang, which broke their bedroom window.
The couple’s first thought was that a tree had fallen or that they were being attacked for some reason.
Marron, 34, saw that his front door, which had been locked with a deadbolt, was blown open.
He went outside and a neighbor told him, “The carwash just blew up.”
The Marrons started checking their own home.
“It blew out every single window in our house,” Marron said.
His wife added, “Stuff fell off the walls. Cabinets were on the floor. It reminded you of an earthquake.”
Neighbors said walls shifted in their homes.
A car behind the carwash was destroyed by the explosion and was “part of the focus of the investigation” into its cause, said Willow Street Fire Company deputy chief Dave Reese.
Across Willow Street Pike, workers at some businesses were surveying the damage done to their building.
Workers at the Hess Group and Signature Stone said doors were blown off and damage was done to the inside and the outside of their building. They noticed cracks in walls and pieces of soffit blown off the outside.
A three-story warehouse across the street from the carwash sustained structural damage and damage to its exterior bricks and windows, Reese said.
Initial reports of a large boom were called in to county dispatchers from the city, Millersville, Manheim Township and other municipalities.
“The carwash building was already down when we arrived, and debris was everywhere,” Reese said. “There was an active gas leak at the rear of the building. There was no fire when we arrived.”
More than 30 firefighters from Willow Street, Lampeter and Lancaster Township controlled the leaking gas and secured the other utilities at the site, Reese said. They also canvassed the mobile home park to assure no one was injured.
A bystander said the blast woke up her son, who lives two miles south of the carwash.
Charles and Dianne Metzger’s trailer on Lot 2 of the mobile home park was closest to the blast and was severely damaged, they said.
“The whole trailer just shifted,” Metzger, 61, said. “I was scared to death.”
He actually was awakened at 2 a.m. by loud banging coming from the carwash, he said. When he stepped outside to check it out, he saw a car speed away from the carwash.
Metzger suspects that motorist may have had something to do with the explosion an hour and a half later.
The Metzgers found extensive damage to the outside of their mobile home and throughout every room inside.
Walls shifted and cracked. A television and windows were smashed. The ceiling and doors were knocked out of place. Cabinets and wall hangings were scattered on the floor.
Metzger said a fire official told him that if it had not been for a block wall on the south side of the carwash, his mobile home would have absorbed an even greater blast from the explosion.
The Metzgers made their last payment on the mobile home two years ago and have no insurance.
“We’re going to lose everything, and that’s all we have,” Metzger said. “I just sat down and bawled.”
His wife, 43, at first thought a tree fell. Then she feared the underground gas tanks would explode.
She was thankful no one was hurt by the blast.
The couple have four children between 6 and 13 years old, and all are autistic, so she is trying to help them deal with the incident.
“It’s devastating,” she said.
Dianne Metzger works at the Lancaster Arts Hotel, and her husband collects disability benefits. They said they don’t know where the money will come from to replace their home.
In the short term, the Metzgers will be staying with a family member or friends, said Kathy Smyser of the American Red Cross. The Red Cross will help the Metzgers pay for groceries for the next week or so.
The family is the only one displaced by the explosion, as damage to about a dozen other mobile homes was minor, she said.
There are about 20 mobile homes in the park.
Edwin Westheaffer’s mobile home next to the Metzger’s sustained only minimal damage, he said.
The explosion apparently shot a mangled piece of tin through the air that took a chunk out of the home’s roof and landed about 25 feet away on Westheaffer’s yard.
The 42-year-old forklift operator also had five windows blown out of his mobile home from the blast.
The carwash has changed names and owners through the years. It is currently named United Car Wash, West Lampeter Township manager Dee Dee McGuire said.
County property records list 1004 Willow Street Pike LLC as the owner of the property. The principal contact for the business is Sam Rahman of Harrisburg. He did not return a phone call for comment on Friday.
The carwash was operational before the blast, though gas pumps at the site have not been used recently, McGuire said. The township has not had any recent complaints about the property.
The business included an automatic carwash area as well as several bays for manual washing.