Mannford, OK – Investigators have determined that a natural gas leak was the cause of a huge fire that destroyed several apartments in Mannford and injured 6 people, including a volunteer firefighter.
The blaze broke out Monday night at the Salt Creek Apartments in Mannford.
In a sign of the times perhaps, firefighters first focused their attention on the possibility of a meth lab as the cause.
“They had kind of looked toward that initially, and then with the type of explosion that we had and how extensive it was, they started looking elsewhere,” said Mannford firefighter Carolyn Smythe.
She said it was the largest fire in recent memory in Mannford, excluding the recent wildfires.
“We were anticipating an apartment fire, just one, got out there and ‘holy cow’, it was much larger than that,” Smythe said.