Fatal blast: ‘He didn’t realise he’d made a bomb’
Friend wants to quash rumours the explosion had been caused by P-lab
Howard Miller, 39, was killed in a welding explosion after mixing two compounds and inadvertently creating a bomb that shook West Auckland. On Monday evening the huge blast rattled the suburb of Henderson, shattering the windows of neighbouring properties on Universal Drive and Don Buck Rd.
Josh O’Neill has spoken to the Herald exclusively about the moment his friend, a father of three, died. He wants to quash rumours the explosion had been caused by a clandestine P-lab.
Miller had come to O’Neill’s house on Universal Drive to weld a new exhaust manifold onto O’Neill’s Holden WB Kingswood car at about 4.30pm on Monday.
When Miller arrived he was excited to tell O’Neill he’d managed to store two components of oxyfuel, oxygen and acetylene, into one LPG bottle.
“He came down the drive and was saying he had this awesome new thing which he had managed to make work which was oxyacetylene in an LPG bottle.
“We were going to use it to bend the manifold. But you can’t mix the two at all.”
The two are normally kept in two bottles, each of which has a regulator, the two components meet at the welding torch causing the chemical reaction used to cut or weld.
“He didn’t realise he had made a bomb,” O’Neill said.
Miller had taken the regulator off the bottle which prevents oxygen or other chemicals coming back into the bottle.
“I knew not to mess with it, he tried to get me to stay, he asked me three times.”
HMiller then tried unbolting the regulator on the tank and tried to attach the gas torch head straight onto the bottle.
“To make it fit without the hoses, he had adapted the bottle.” Miller grabbed some pliers off the shelf, then O’Neill started to feel wary and said he was going to step aside. “I said, ‘I’m out of here’. I knew not to mess with it. It is crazy.” O’Neill said he walked out next to his car and heard a small bang. “It wasn’t a loud bang.
“I looked up and I saw bits of shrapnel above me, bits of steel and iron and wood. For video go to nzherald.co.nz
“I turned around to say, ‘Howard you idiot’ but when I turned around the shed was flat.”
It was then that O’Neill realised something had gone horribly wrong. He walked over to the remains of the shed to look for Miller.
“He started calling out ‘Josh, Josh’. “He said, ‘Can you help me man’, and his face looked completely normal. Not panicked or anything.”
O’Neill’s initial reaction was that Miller may not have been badly injured because he was able to speak.
But it wasn’t until O’Neill went to grab him that he realised the extent of Miller’s injuries.
“I ran to get help then I turned straight back because I couldn’t just leave him there.”
Miller’s head backwards. then slumped He died in front of O’Neill’s eyes. The whole time there had been a small blaze at the back of the shed, which had been growing in those long few minutes, O’Neill said.
O’Neill himself felt lucky. If he had been a few steps closer he might have been killed too.
The Herald has sought comment from Fire and Emergency New Zealand and police.
Detective Senior Sergeant Callum McNeill confirmed yesterday afternoon that Miller had gone to a friend’s house to help weld an exhaust onto a car.
“There has been speculation on social media that the explosion was a clan lab, however that is not the case.
“The matter has been referred to the Coroner.”