Georgetown, OH – A 16-year-old girl suffered second-degree burns over 60 percent of her body Monday after an explosion and fire at a home in Georgetown.
Authorities responded to the home in the 300 block of Free Soil Road at about 4:30 p.m. and found Kilee Brookbank in a neighbor’s yard, officials said.
“When we arrived here, the house was fully involved in fire,” Georgetown Fire Chief Joe Rockey said. “There was a young teenage girl out in the middle of the neighbors’ front yard there.”
A medical helicopter flew Brookbank, a junior at Ripley Union Lewis Huntington High School, to University of Cincinnati Medical Center. She was conscious, her airway was intact and she was breathing normally.
Brookbank was transferred to Shriners Hospital later Monday night. Friends of the girl tell 9 On Your Side she will be at the hospital for weeks.
She is in “serious” condition.
Investigators are working to determine exactly how the explosion happened.
“She (Brookbank) had told us she arrived home and went into the house and smelled a strange odor, and lit a candle to combat the odor, and the house exploded,” Rockey said. “There was propane provided to the home from a tank around back. Not sure if that was it or not, we’ll have to do some investigating to figure out if that was the cause.”
Propane can fill an entire home, the chief said.
“Propane is heavier than your oxygen level, your normal oxygen, so it’s going to build up in the floor, under the floor, anywhere it can until it meets an ignition source,” Rockey said. “And that may very well have been the candle. Not saying that’s what it was, but it could have been.”
He said Monday night that the house is a total loss.
“The blast was very significant,” the chief said. “So the young girl is very lucky to be alive today.”
Brian Adamkiewisz lives in the neighborhood, and arrived at his home shortly before the explosion.
“I felt vibration on the floor underneath my feet, then I looked out the front room windows and seen the windows of the house blow out and burst into flames,” he said. “Literally, it sounded like an M-80 going off.”