PHOTOS FROM THE SCENE OF THE FIRE
RAW VIDEO FROM THE SCENE OF THE FIRE
The fire and explosion was reported at a home on Crockett Lane in Ewing Township.
Ewing police say five PSE&G workers and two workers with the contractor Henkels & McCoy were injured. The seven victims were taken to two local hospitals. The seven workers do not have life threatening injuries. The resident who was killed was only identified as a woman who was discovered on the hood of a car parked at #28.
Five of the victims were taken to Capital Health Regional Medical Center in Trenton.
The other two were taken to Capital Health Medical Center in Hopewell.
They sustained head and respiratory injuries and various fractures.
The force from the blast buckled windows in an apartment complex nearby, said resident Marsha Brown, and pictures fell from her walls.
"It felt like a bomb," she said.
She ran to the town house complex, saw a home engulfed in flames and two utility workers on the lawn with injuries that apparently included broken bones. She said she saw another utility worker on a sidewalk crying, being held by a woman.
PSE&G responded to a report of a gas line broken by a contractor shortly before noon.
The workers were repairing the gas line at the time of the explosion.
"My body was shaking. I like to say I am calm, but I was shaking," said Brown, who had a day off from her job as an infant hearing screener at a hospital. "You could feel the flames, everything."
Into the night, they still had to spray water on the smoking debris left behind after a massive explosion in Ewing Township that turned homes into splinters.
"The loudest sound I ever heard," said Robert Conrad, a resident.
Contractors digging a hole had ruptured a gas line, and notified PSE&G. While those workers were on the scene, the explosion blasted through the house on Crockett Lane.
55 homes were damaged and at least 10 destroyed. Seven workers were injured and one woman was killed. Robert Conrad was four houses away.
"I was sitting there having lunch and bang boom, and a lot of things fell off the wall. I ran out right away and looked. The smoke was overhead and it was just starting to rain insulation," Conrad said.
You can see what he means; the insulation is still hanging on the branches near his home. Conrad took pictures of the fire that followed, and seemed shaken by all he had escaped. Bill Carpenter wasn't home, thankfully.
"A neighbor called and said there was an explosion in our development and that our windows were blown out," Carpenter said.
The city is still investigating, but they acknowledge no homes were evacuated when the gas line ruptured, until after the explosion.
"Are you comfortable that the proper steps were taken to secure that area?" Eyewitness News reporter Jim Dolan asked.
"Well without knowing the whole picture of this thing right now, because it's fragmented, I'd rather not comment on it," Lt. Ron Lunetta said.
Many who were not allowed to return Tuesday night, stayed at an area firehouse, some brought pets with them, and other residents brought clothes and food for those whose homes were damaged. It's a community that comes together in tragedy.
"I really feel bad hearing about it, it's an awful thing that happened," a resident said. A resident of the complex, Bryan Gentry, drove home minutes after he heard an explosion and as he got closer, saw a black smoke cloud. The fire was intensely hot, he said, and he saw one person walking away from the fire who appeared to be stunned.
"It was just unreal," he said, adding that emergency crews responded "really fast."
