Blast rocks Baker
9 injured in natural gas explosion in Denver neighborhood
Alexander Ponton thought it was a bomb.
Debris smashed into Ponton’s car as he drove east on West Fourth Avenue near Santa Fe Drive. The 24-year-old Thornton man got out and heard screams for help coming from a sixunit residence complex. It had exploded.
Ponton jumped into action, assisting a man and woman out of the rubble who had cuts and scrapes on them.
“First when I got out of the car, delirious, you don’t really think to help anyone right away, but when they’re crying for help, it doesn’t matter your situation,” Ponton said. “If I was still standing, I could still go help them out, so that’s kind of what I did.”
Nine people were injured in the natural gas explosion Tuesday afternoon in Denver’s
Baker neighborhood, according to the Denver Fire Department. Two people were hospitalized — one in critical condition.
A gaping hole at the corner of the 300 block of Santa Fe Drive revealed a pile of rubble containing bricks, wooden beams and debris where a sixunit building once stood.
Greg Pixley, Denver Fire Department spokesman, said the gas explosion was the biggest he has seen in about 15 years, when a similar situation happened only blocks away.
One woman was trapped after the explosion, but firefighters managed to rescue her, Pixley said at a news conference. She was in stable condition at Denver Health. A second person was in critical condition.
The main injuries that victims suffered were burns and blunt force trauma from the force of the explosion. The seven people who were treated for their injuries on the scene were across the street from the explosion. Debris flew for blocks.
As firefighters, police, victims, neighbors and journalists stood watching the chaotic scene Tuesday afternoon, the gas leak remained active. Pixley described the situation as dangerous and said the biggest worries running through his head were additional explosions, building collapse and finding bodies buried within the rubble.
Xcel later shut off the gas leak. Edward Scott had been sitting on his porch a few houses down the street, chatting with an insurance agent over the phone about a hail claim, when he heard the boom and was kicked back.
“I told the insurance guy that I had to go because I thought my house just blew up,” Scott said. Scott ran inside his house and found some items knocked from the wall but most things intact. Then he went back outside to see people crawling out of the rubble.
“One woman was screaming ‘My cat! My cat!’ ” Scott said.
Later, a black kitten named Lillith was rescued from the rubble and clutched tightly by her loved ones.
Paul Adams and Margie Brown were watching television about a block away when the explosion jolted their home.
“It sounded like an airplane crashed,” Brown said.
Brown and Adams bickered over whether Adams was awake at the time of the crash — Adams said he was watching a Western on television — but if he wasn’t awake before, the enormous blast was enough to get him on his feet and outside, where he saw a huge plume of smoke and scatter debris.
Xcel spokeswoman Michelle Aguayo was unable to confirm whether anyone had called Xcel to report a natural gas smell before the explosion.
As the evening continued, Pixley said the fire department was bringing a cadaver dog to the scene to sniff through the rubble and make sure no one else was buried within. If no one else was under the partially collapsed structure, Pixley said investigators would begin digging to determine where the explosion originated.
Victims who had lost their homes in the explosion were being assisted by the Red Cross.
“This whole thing was surreal,” Scott said. “My ears are still ringing.”