House Explosion in Girard

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From Warren  Tribune Chronicle 9/19/08.

GIRARD - A house exploded at the corner of Washington Avenue and Townsend Street Thursday evening, shaking homes for several blocks, knocking out power and scattering debris for blocks.

A home next door caught fire and burned to the ground, killing two dogs. Two women inside were rescued by neighbors before firefighters arrived. There were no fatalities and no major injuries, according to rescue workers.

Another neighbor Ray Lee, 1102 Washington Ave., said he and his wife, Leanne, were on the couch watching "The Simpsons" after dinner when they heard the explosion.

"I thought someone had driven a truck into my porch," he said. "I jumped out the door, ready to scrap with the drunk idiot that crashed into my house. But there was no one there, and all the neighbors started coming out."

Then fine ash started raining down, and then chunks of roof started coming down near the explosion, said Lee.

The vacant house 824 Washington Ave. was being renovated before it was flattened by the explosion. No official cause was available Thursday night, but a natural gas leak was suspected. Several neighbors reported smelling gas and Dominion East Ohio had been called to the empty house before, according to reports.

No one was in the house at the time of the explosion.

The explosion ignited the home at 820 Washington Ave. Other houses in the area were damaged, with windows blown out of many. Some described the scene as looking like a bomb had gone off.

Thirteen-year-old Kade Swartz, 911 Washington Ave., said he was in the back yard of 820 Washington Ave. wrestling with the boys who live there.

"I saw a bunch of pieces from the house flying everywhere and I ran to a neighbor's house to call 911 but someone already had called," Kade said.

He said he was hit in the forehead by falling debris.

He identified the residents of 820 Washington Ave. as Denise and Robin Seitz and their children, Isaiah Mann, 12, and Michael DiVencenzo, 13, as well as Phyllis Seitz. He said Phyllis is Robin's mother.

The Trumbull County Auditor's Web site lists the homeowner as Denise Seitz.

Kade also said the dogs who died were named Chloe and Runaway. He said they were in the living room but he didn't know what kind of dogs they were.

Georgia Kuneli, 1038 Washington Ave., said the explosion happened about 6:30 p.m. She said she heard a loud boom, followed by breaking glass. Her gas, electricity and telephone service went out within seconds.

Ohio Edison spokeswoman Luann Koch said power was restored within an hour.

Hundreds of people were seen walking around the neighborhood for several blocks in both directions. Police had Churchill Road, Smithsonian Street, Townsend Street and many of the side streets leading into them blocked off to vehicular traffic.

Thick black smoke could be seen billowing into the sky from U.S. Route 422 in McKinley Heights. The smell of smoke was wafting through the air for about a quarter of a mile.

Leonard Blount, 1023 Washington Ave., said he and several neighbors ran to the scene immediately after the explosion and helped two women get out.

Joe Lewis of Hubbard said he was visiting his brother, Ben Lewis at 1030 Washington Ave., when the explosion happened.

"We were standing in the garage and heard a loud boom. The house shook so bad and then we saw a huge mushroom cloud and ran over to see if we could help," Lewis said.

He said another neighbor, David Shelley, 1054 Washington Ave., was the one who carried one of the women out of the burning home. Lewis also said it took 20 minutes for the Fire Department to arrive.

Bob Ward, 1056 Washington, was pulling on his shoes as he came out his door.

"You could smell the gas all the way up here," he said.

Ralph Chuey, a former city zoning inspector, who lives on Prospect Street near Ward Avenue about nine blocks away said he almost got knocked out of his chair when the explosion occurred.

''I was sitting in the living room reading the newspaper when I heard this very loud bang. It was so loud it rocked the house. When I went outside there were people everywhere trying to figure out what had happened,'' Chuey said.

Chuey said a neighbor told everyone he heard on the police scanner that it was a house explosion.

His wife, Colette, saw a large mass of black smoke in the sky.

Chuey received calls from neighbors and others in the city who told him debris and insulation from the explosion was as far away as the Girard Public Library - five blocks from the explosion site.

Tony Simeone, who lives on Goist Lane, a mile away, said he was working in his garage when he heard a loud thump. He thought it was a tree.

''It felt like something hit the roof,'' he said.

Simeone any many others walked to explosion site and saw debris everywhere.

''There was wood, debris and power lines all over. There was a car with the front end missing,'' Simeone said.

He said neighboring houses also were damaged with broken windows and structural damage. A house on the opposite side of Townsend had its garage and foundation destroyed by debris. A mangled piece of aluminum siding was hanging over a power line, and workers from Ohio Edison could be seen working on the pole above it.

Reporter Bob Coupland contributed to this report.

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Here's some of the pics I took.

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Another one

[SixbyFire]

Wow, that's crazy. Did you feel the explosion or hear it from where you were at? Curious minds want to know...

Jeff

[yfdgricker]

Explosion ignites neighborly deeds
Story by  John W. Goodwin Jr. in the Youngstown Vindicator on 9/20/2008.

Residents put safety ahead of property concerns

Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of Thursday’s blast.

1At about 6:15 p.m. Thursday, residents in the immediate — and not so immediate — area of Washington Avenue near Church Hill Road were pulled from the dinner table, outdoor activities and evening television by an explosion that could be heard and felt about a mile away.

The house at 824 Washington had exploded. A home immediately next to the 824 address caught fire and burned to the ground.

Firefighters, gas company representatives and the state fire marshal were on the scene Friday morning and through the afternoon looking for clues.

Fire Chief Kenneth Bornemiss said officials have no definitive answers to questions posed about the explosion, but they are working on it.

“They have a lot of work to do. Everything is preliminary right now,” he said.

Investigators left the scene late Friday afternoon, but still no cause has been determined.

It is the responses of everyday people, however, that was of note.

Doug Beach lives five houses away from the destroyed residences and felt the explosion rock his home. He immediately ran out to see if anyone was injured and who needed help before returning home to put on shoes and look for his teenage son who was out playing with other children often seen playing in the area.

Kenny Moran, Washington Avenue resident and street department superintendent, was shopping at a grocery store a few blocks away when the call about an explosion near his home came across the radio. He left his buggy in the aisle as he raced to make it back to his neighborhood.

“My house I wasn’t worried about. I was more worried about the neighbor kids because we had a lot of kids who would play ball in the street and stuff around here every day,” he said.

Brian Mazzella, another Washington Avenue resident, said personal property seemed to be the least of anyone’s concerns.

He said the home at 824 Washington had been rented but the tenants had not yet moved in, but the house next door contained a family of five.

Mazzella said that in the home that burned to the ground lived a woman, her husband, her mother and two young boys. The boys, he said, were playing in the rear of the home during the explosion and the two women were inside.

Mazzella and Beach said the efforts of all neighbors in the area were nothing short of heroic in getting the two women out of the house and to a safe area before the home was engulfed. Both men said the effort paid off with both women safely taken across the street mere seconds before fire took over the house.

The women and children were not seriously injured in the explosion or fire; however, according to Mazzella, the family did have two mixed-breed dogs that did not make it out. He said one of the dogs nipped at would-be rescuers, refusing to be taken out of the burning home.

Bill Reinhart, who lives near the explosion, stood near the site of the explosion Friday reflecting on what had taken place. He said moving into action should be second nature for any close-knit neighborhood.

“If you see there is something you can do you better react — you have to react,” he said. “If there is anything in your ability to help someone, you just have to do it.”

Anthony Perry, a Smithsonian Street resident, was concerned about his 82-year-old friend and her son, who suffers from Down syndrome, after the family witnessed virtually all of the windows in their Washington Avenue home blown out by the force of the explosion.

He said the woman and her son ran out of the house after hearing the blast thinking a portion of their home had exploded.

The woman and her son are now staying with relatives a short distance away on Lincoln Avenue.

Early Friday and throughout the day residents congregated on various parts of the street discussing the issue. Moran said neighbors gathered on his porch until the early morning hours the night of the explosion discussing the matter, speculating and thinking of what may have caused such an explosion.

[yfdgricker]

Blast levels Girard home
Story By DAN BRITT in the Youngstown Vindicator on 9/19/2008.

The blast shook the police station nearly eight blocks away and threw debris over homes in a four-block radius.

GIRARD — A house on the corner of Townsend and Washington streets exploded around 6 p.m. Thursday, leveling it, setting another home ablaze and causing damage to several nearby houses.

Andy Waller, who lives a mere two lots away, said he was knocked off the couch by the blast.

More concerned than fazed by the boom, he immediately ran into a house next to the one that exploded just minutes before flames engulfed the neighboring home.

Waller and another man helped two elderly women escape from what would become a six-hour inferno.

There was no smoke yet, no fire, but I sensed it coming,” Waller said.

Come it did. At least four engines were on the scene; smoke could be smelled from North Youngstown.

Kitty Diamond, who lives in the neighborhood, heard the blast at her job a mile away on Kline Street.

Girard police officers felt the station rumble nearly eight blocks away. The Girard Fire Department arrived at the home, 820 Washington Ave., and removed the two women and a boy. Neighbors said, however, that the women’s two dogs perished.

The two women rescued were taken by ambulance to St. Elizabeth Health Center, along with two children, Waller said.

Fire crews could not extinguish the flames before the house burned to the ground.

Twisted two-by-fours, whole sheets of plywood, long pieces of siding and shattered cinder blocks and glass covered the street around the house and neighbors’ yards. Most of the houses within a four-block radius were hit by flying debris.

The ranch sitting directly across from the explosion at 135 Townsend Street may have incurred the most damage. The garage was crushed by the blast force. The kitchen and living room look as though they weathered mortar fire. A 3-by-4-foot hole blown in the kitchen offered a grim view of the collapsed garage and a 5-by-6-foot hole opened the living room to the outdoors.

The owner of the home, Bob Delpine, escaped injury by sheer luck. He had been remodeling the kitchen area all day before stepping out for a beer on the porch just after 6 p.m.

“If I were standing there, they would have scraped me off the wall,” Delpine said, pointing to his kitchen sink, now filled with chips of drywall.

He estimated the damage to his house at $50,000, at least.

“That’s not a generous estimate,” he added.

A police report says numerous homes sustained damage near the home, and the nearest homes sustained damage that affected their structural integrity. Homes around 824 Washington Ave. had windows blown out from the blast.

[yfdgricker]

There are several photos on the Youngstown Vindicator site at http://www.vindy.com/news/2008/sep/19/blast-levels-girard-home/

[pgoogs]

I wasn't at home at the time, but if I was I'm sure I would of felt it!  It is not far from my apartment.

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more pics re-sized

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I didn't get there real quick because I was on I-80 with a truck load of stuff to take to my apartment.  Our webmaster's wife Barb sent me a text message saying there was a house explosion.  I truned on the scanner and ham radio and was monitoring Girard Fire and Lanes Ambulance freqs.  I went to my apartment and unloaded as fast as I could, then grabbed the camera and a hand held scanner and went to the scene.