Baltimore woman saved by neighbors after explosion
BALTIMORE — In an instant, Anita Moore was no longer working from home in her upstairs bedroom. She was trapped under the wreckage of her house — pinned in the dark under several feet of bricks, plywood and other debris, and yelling herself hoarse for help.
The 55-year-old customer service representative said she was grateful to the neighbors who found her and dug her out from the smoking ruins of the deadly gas explosion that leveled three houses, killing two and injuring seven others in Northwest Baltimore’s Reisterstown Station neighborhood Monday morning.
“I was completely covered. All I could see was the bricks and everything laying on top of me . ... I should not have been able to walk away from that. They got me out,” Moore said. “My family members — they’re going through it, but they’re alive. I’m grateful to God. I’m grateful to everyone.”
The cause of the explosion is under investigation. It killed 20-year-old Morgan State University student Joseph Graham and a woman whose name is not yet public. Five of the seven people who were hospitalized were in critical condition, according to the Baltimore Fire Department.
The Fire Department provided no names or ages of the victims or survivors Tuesday.
Moore also declined to share the names or conditions of her two hospitalized family members to respect their privacy.
The family had been living at one of the three now-demolished houses — 4230 Labyrinth Road — for more than a year, said Moore, who grew up in Northwest Baltimore.
On Monday, Moore had been on a routine customer service call, answering a question about how to fill out a health insurance application, when she smelled gas and an explosion brought the house down.
“All I heard was a loud boom,” she said. “I’m really not sure what happened after that. Everything else was a daze.”
Buried and unable to move, Moore yelled to her family members — and then to her neighbors, when she heard them begin calling out for survivors. She credited Dean Jones and Antoinetta Parrish for pulling her out.
When Moore’s voice gave out, she said, Parrish’s never stopped.
“At one point, I couldn’t yell anymore,” Moore said. “She kept saying, ‘She’s here! She’s here!’ That’s my angel. It was like she was whispering in my ear.”
She couldn’t fully comprehend what had happened until after the neighbors pulled her out from under what was left of the house.
“I sat down and realized I wasn’t in the upstairs bedroom,” she said. “I was actually in the backyard.”
She heaped praise on the neighbors who helped pull her to safety.
“My neighborhood is amazing. Running from three blocks away, down the street, up the street to give assistance? My neighbors are amazing. I’m very grateful to everyone.”
One of her co-workers, Carol Sample, noticed via their shared phone system that Moore’s line had been idle for nearly an hour, said Lisa Brown, who has worked with Moore for six years.
“Miss Anita ain’t been on a call for like 50 minutes,” she remembered Sample telling her. “It looks like she’s waiting for a call to come through.”
Then, Brown saw coverage of the explosion on the news and worried for the worst.
“I called my supervisor and said, ‘I’m leaving out. I’m going to find Anita,’” she said. “Thank God, we found her.”
Brown said she escorted her friend and co-worker to her own house nearby and got her a meal, water and a shower before taking her to the hospital to have her minor injuries checked out Monday night.
Moore has been staying with friends and family members, who she said have rallied around her and those who were hurt in the blast.
“I have amazing friends and family,” she said. “My neighbors are my family.”
‘I should not have been able to walk away’