Midland County, TX- An entire family in South East Midland County is in critical condition after their home exploded Thursday morning.
“Evidently a pocket of gas built up underneath the mobile home and got into the mobile home,” says Midland County Sheriff Gary Painter. “It exploded causing the double wide mobile home to be completely disintegrated.”
According to the sheriff, two adults and two children were in the home during the explosion. Each of them have been airlifted to University Medical Center in Lubbock.
Painter says out of all his years on the force, he’s never seen an explosion happen like this.
“Propane when it gets into an enclosed area, and it reaches or finds an ignition point, it is like a bomb,” says Painter. “That is exactly what happened here.”
Painter says law enforcement is now investigating who the pipeline belongs to, and how the leak happened in the first place.
“They’ve got their higher ups coming, line crews coming in. They are bleeding the line off right now. If you look around you can see smoke from some of the flares. That’s what they are doing is flaring off the gas, to reduce the pressure,” says Painter. “Right now I want to stress we are in deep prayer for the family. Two young children, and a mother and a father. So it is a serious time.”
At this time, the leak has been shut off and the road near the house has re-opened.