Two-Alarm Blaze Erupts after Blast Levels St. Louis House

ST. LOUIS—A two-story brick house blew up late Tuesday night, hurtling bricks and window casings onto the yard and spreading flames to a neighbor's home. The couple and baby who lived in the house that blew up said they had just moved out and were safely away at the time.

"God was with us truly, I'm telling you," said Rochelle Merollis, who lived at the home in the 1100 block of Newhouse Avenue, along with her fiancé and 13-month-old son Jaxson.

The cause of the explosion is currently undetermined, St. Louis fire Capt. Garon Mosby said. Bomb and arson detectives have been notified. Spire, the gas company, had to dig out the rubble to get to a gas shutoff, Mosby said.

The two-alarm fire was reported about 11 p.m. Sixty firefighters fought the blaze, and it took them over two hours to extinguish it. No firefighters were hurt. They brought in search dogs to look for people, fearing someone had been trapped inside.

Merollis, 33, said they had smelled something strange in the basement two days ago but didn't think it was gas.

She said the home is owned by her fiancé's father. She said they had wanted to move out for awhile and found a home a few miles away in the Riverview area that is in a nicer neighborhood, she said. They had moved a few bags of clothes to the new home but most of their belongings went up in flames at the home on Newhouse.

"I'm still in shock," she told a Post-Dispatch reporter.

She said her fiancé had gone to retrieve formula from the house and apparently left shortly before it exploded.

Her two pit bulls, Bella and Chapo, are missing and Merollis fears they were in the basement when the home exploded. She drove around the neighborhood early Wednesday to try to find them.

The fire spread to a neighbor's home. Verneta Haughton, said she was making a late-night snack and heard a loud explosion. "Suddenly, smoke and flames were coming from everywhere. It went down in 0.1 second. It went down quick. I was trying to escape, and the whole back end of my home collapsed."

Haughton, 40, said she escaped unhurt. She said the home that exploded is just a few feet from hers. She said her two children were staying with the father at a different location when it happened.

Haughton said she has no place to go. She said she works for Metro as a call-a-ride driver and all of her uniforms for work are ruined. "I don't have any clothes," she said.

A woman across the street has a video camera that captured the explosion. "It went down so quick," Haughton said.

Robert Cohen of the Post-Dispatch staff contributed to this report.

———

Visit the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at www.stltoday.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.