Neighbours’ human chain to save man in gas blast rubble
Brick by brick, they dug him out after explosion that killed woman
Hero residents told yesterday how they made a human chain to dig a man out of the rubble of a gas blast that claimed a woman’s life.
The rescued man, named locally as David Murphy, was critically ill in hospital last night, while there was nothing left of his property, which had recently been sold subject to contract.
In a further twist, the prospective new owner of the three-bedroom terraced home told of his own lucky escape when the house blew up as he drove past with his family.
emergency workers yesterday confirmed the body of a woman,
‘I could see the sky from my sofa’
named locally as Doreen, had been found in the wreckage of the property in Kingstanding, Birmingham, which had been advertised for sale as having a boiler in need of ‘repair or replacement’. Last night neighbours said the victim was Mr Murphy’s partner and lived in nearby erdington.
About 20 people were evacuated and given shelter at a nearby pub after the incident on Sunday night. resident Callum Attwood and two others, known as Jo and Dave, were among up to a dozen who helped free Mr Murphy.
Dave said: ‘The guy was in the kitchen, slumped against a fridge or a washing machine with his legs out in front of him. He was being pinned down by an old ghetto blaster.
‘He was going, “Don’t pull me – my legs”. We managed to pull the stereo out and then free him.’
Mark Pearman, 49, said before rescue workers arrived, ‘one group [of neighbours] were at the front [of the house], the other went around to the back. We formed a human chain and passed each other rubble piece by piece.’ roger Higgins, who lives next door, said he heard Mr Murphy and a woman dining on the patio shortly before the blast, which happened about 15 seconds after they went inside.
‘There was a small bang and then the big one’, he told the Daily Mail. ‘I was lying on the sofa and when I looked up and I could see the sky.’ By the time he escaped, neighbours had carried Mr Murphy out on an abandoned mattress which was retrieved from a nearby garden. Kashif Mahmood said he was driving past the house with his family at the moment it exploded in a fireball.
The father of two, from nearby Perry Barr, said he had recently had an offer accepted on the blast address, but had not signed a contract. He said: ‘I have been lucky two times over – once escaping serious injury and two by not signing the contract.’
Martin Ward-White, of West Midlands Fire Service, said it could be ‘days’ before the cause of the gas explosion was established.