Baltimore City Firefighters Rescue Three after Blast

UPDATE (8:47 a.m. Aug. 11): The body of a man was discovered by Baltimore firefighters before 1 a.m. raising the death toll from the explosion to two. The blast also injured as many as seven people.

BALTIMORE — A major gas explosion ripped through three rowhomes in the Reisterstown Station neighborhood in Northwest Baltimore, killing one woman and seriously injuring at least six others.

Windows shattered, doors shot off their hinges, and bricks rained across the street as people scrambled to escape the wreckage of the blast just before 10 a.m. in the 4200 block of Labyrinth Road, just behind the Reisterstown Road Plaza shopping center near the city-county line.

The exact cause of the explosion was not immediately clear. Rescue crews pulled a woman from the rubble just before noon and freed another man around 12:15 p.m., according to the Baltimore firefighters union.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. said the utility’s crews had “found no current readings of gas” when they canvassed the neighborhood. But BGE shut off gas and electric service to ensure the scene was safe at the Fire Department’s request, officials said in a statement.

“Once fire rescue is complete, we will begin the process of working with the Fire Department to investigate BGE equipment in the area,” the BGE statement said.

The utility company and the fire department will conduct inspections of homes “in a wide area to ensure there is no additional damage,” BGE said. The inspections will look at the gas mains, service piping leading to properties and gas meters, as well as customer-owned appliances and piping.

“In addition, BGE is reviewing records for this area, including any reported gas odors, recent inspection results and repairs,” the company said.

Few details were public about the victim or survivors as rescuers continued to search the debris throughout the day Monday for others, fire officials said. Officials did not provide ages of the people who were rescued, but witnesses said they heard children calling for help after the blast.

“This is a horrendous situation,” Baltimore fire Chief Niles Ford said.

A University of Maryland Medical Center spokeswoman confirmed three men were being treated for injuries from the gas explosion at the hospital. One was in critical condition, one was serious and one was in fair condition, spokeswoman Lisa Clough said.

“It’s a labor-intensive rescue,” said Baltimore Fire Department spokeswoman Blair Adams. “We have homes that were pretty much crumbled.”

More than 200 rescue personnel were on the scene Monday, along with Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young, City Council President Brandon Scott and police Commissioner Michael Harrison. Baltimore Police warned people to avoid the area. One neighbor fainted, and volunteers passed out water to firefighters working in shifts in the 90-degree heat.

When the power and gas was shut off in the block, so was their air conditioning.

BGE spokesperson Richard Yost said the company received a call from the fire department around 9:54 a.m. asking crews to respond to the scene.

“We are on the scene and working closely with the fire department to make the situation safe,” Yost said.

One person was buried from the neck down, and another was sheltering in a closet when Kevin Matthews, an Occupational Safety and Health Administration building inspector who lives in the block, arrived around 10 a.m.

Matthews, who has lived on Labyrinth Road for 28 years, said he could hear shouting from children trapped: “Come get us! We’re stuck!”

When he walked up the front steps, he realized the house had been completely razed. A long crack ran between the destroyed house and the one next door.

“I could see the back alley from the front stoop,” Matthews said. “We moved out of the way and let the firemen handle it.”

Some area residents reported feeling the blast several miles away. Neighbors reported having their windows blown out and doors blasted off the hinges.

A crowd of residents cheered from the sidewalks as emergency responders carried a woman on a stretcher to a nearby ambulance.

Moses Glover was inside his nearby home in the 4200 block of Labyrinth Road when he heard a boom and looked outside his window. Suddenly, a second blast knocked the 77-year-old off of his feet, he said.

“It knocked me across the bed,” Glover said. “I came downstairs and saw all of the front of the houses across the street, they were on the ground. I had a picture window downstairs, the glass is in the chair now.”

Moses struggled to steady his breathing and said he was “shook up” by the experience.

The explosion destroyed the home of Major Watkins Jr., 88, and Caroline Youngblood, 90. Watkins, a U.S. Army artillery veteran, said the blast “sounded like Korea.”

When Latanya Heath heard her bay window shatter, she initially thought a rock from a lawnmower had struck it.

“When I came outside, I saw the house on the ground,” Heath said. “It was chaos.”

Jordan Ciesielczyk-Gibson, 31, who lives about a mile away from where the explosion occurred, was in bed Monday morning when he was startled by the loud blast.

“I heard the boom, and I was like, ‘what was that?’ Then, the whole house shook,” said Ciesielczyk-Gibson, “It all happened so fast.”

State Sen. Jill Carter thanked residents for reaching out to help the families impacted by the explosion. Clothing, food and other essentials were being dropped off at the Applebee’s in Reisterstown Plaza. FEMA has supplied pallets of bottled water, Carter said in a tweet.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said in a tweet that he was “closely monitoring” the situation.

“We are closely monitoring the situation in northwest Baltimore following this morning’s horrific explosion,” he said. “We have reached out to offer our full support to the ongoing response and recovery efforts, and are deeply grateful to the first responders on the scene.”

Scott said the explosion was a tragedy and joined other city and state leaders in calling for community unity.

“What we need Baltimore to do right now is pray, pray that we’re able to find folks, pray that we’re able to get these folks out of here,” the city council president said.

While the exact cause of the blasts are not immediately clear, many Baltimore-area gas lines are in serious need of repair — a project that could take BGE at least two decades to complete, The Baltimore Sun reported last year.

BGE, the nation’s oldest gas utility with origins dating to 1817, likely needs to replace thousands of miles of obsolete pipes.

The Baltimore Sun’s Jessica Anderson, Christine Condon, Scott Dance, Justin Fenton, Thalia Juarez, Daniel Oyefusi and Talia Richman contributed to this report.

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