Huntsville, UT – An explosion leveled a Huntsville house early Thursday and buried the homeowner in rubble.
“He’s lucky honestly. He was in the home and the neighbor helped pull him out of the home after the explosion. So he’s very lucky to be alive. I mean, really, it’s kind of miraculous he survived it,” said Britt Clark, deputy fire marshal for the Weber Fire District.
“He literally pulled him out of the rubble of the home.”
The homeowner, a man in his late 40s, was taken to McKay-Dee Hospital in critical but stable condition, he said.
The incident happened about 7 a.m. at 12780 E. Evergreen Park Drive. The homeowner, whose name was not immediately released, reportedly heard his carbon monoxide detectors going off. He put his dog outside on the porch before going back in to search for the source of the alarm, according to his neighbor, Trent Gibson.
Gibson said he was just leaving for work and walking out to his truck when his neighbor’s house exploded about 100 yards away. He said it was like fireworks that give a loud boom but don’t have any colors.
“That’s what it felt like when it hit my chest. But there was just debris in the air, just flying everywhere from the explosion. We didn’t see any ball of flame or anything,” he said.
Gibson started yelling for his neighbor.
“(I) started running across the road. And finally when I got over there I yelled, ‘Mike’ one more time and he says, ‘I’m here.’ And I asked him if he was OK and he said he wasn’t sure. He started crawling out so I went down into the rubble and helped him out of it,” he said.
The homeowner, who was already wearing a leg brace due to recent knee surgery, had singed hair and multiple cuts all over his body, Gibson said. He said his neighbor also seemed disoriented.
Gibson got his first aid kit and started patching up his neighbor until emergency crews arrived. He also found the man’s dog and took him inside his house.
Most of the home collapsed, but there was no fire, Clark said.
“There’s a small section still standing, but it’s unstable. The house is a total loss,” he said.
Investigators believe a propane leak most likely caused the explosion. None of the houses in that area have natural gas lines, Clark said. Most of the homes have 500 to 1,000 gallon tanks and run on propane, he said.
Figuring out where the leak in the line was from the outside tank to inside the house could take awhile, Clark said.
Likewise, he said it would be tough to determine what ignited the gas.
“Just like in a house with natural gas, if it’s leaking it just needs that ignition source. So it could have been as simple as something as the furnace kicking on in the morning or the water heater kicking on to provide that ignition source for it,” Clark said.
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Investigators believe the propane had likely been leaking for awhile to cause that kind of blast.
He said the incident is a good reminder for all residents to get their appliances checked regularly, including checking for leaks. Also, if a carbon monoxide detector goes off, Clark said homeowners should call 911 immediately.
Gibson said he’s glad that his neighbor, who has lived in the house for about 10 years, did not suffer more serious injuries. But he added, “It’s hard looking out the window and seeing a pile or rubble rather than a house. It’s a little unreal.”