What to know:
- A late-Thursday explosion destroyed a vacant home in Warren; firefighters extinguished the fire within 10 minutes.
- Preliminary reports point to a natural gas explosion, but investigators are still determining the cause.
- Nearby homes and an SUV were damaged; one resident suffered a minor injury, and his condemned home left him needing temporary housing.
- No one was seriously hurt, and neighbors described a powerful blast that sent debris and glass across the block.
WARREN, Mich. – A massive explosion destroyed a vacant home and damaged multiple others late Thursday night in Warren, sending debris flying in every direction.
The first calls started coming in around 11 p.m. Thursday night, quickly followed by police and fire sirens. The explosion rocked the neighborhood in all directions.
Previous coverage --> Overnight explosion levels Warren home, hurling debris in all directions
“Dispatch Center received multiple calls from the area,” Wilbert “Skip” McAdams, Warren’s Fire Commissioner, said on Friday afternoon. “We got reports on this as far away as Grosse Pointe that they heard the explosion didn’t know exactly what it was.”
When first responders arrived, the home was fully engulfed, with heavy fire and smoke coming from the entire structure. The Warren Fire Department said its crews put out the fire within 10 minutes and confirmed the home was vacant and no one was injured.
McAdams said preliminary reports indicate some sort of natural gas explosion, but the cause is still under investigation.
“She saw a flash…”
By sunrise on Friday, the damage was widespread and shocking.
Glass was strewn all over the streets for hundreds of feet. Aluminum siding, wooden planks, and other debris were spotted in all directions up the block.
“We felt the house shake,” Tammy Hawkins, who has lived in the neighborhood for 18 years, said. “It was like a Thump.”
“My husband was out with the puppies, and he saw the poof in the air, and he got in the car and drove. There were so many sirens coming from every direction that I can’t believe how fast they responded.”
Homes on all sides of the blast sustained damage, with the adjacent home being hit by one of the walls. It forced the man living there to run for his life.
“He suffered a minor, non-life-threatening injury from stumbling getting up out of bed and being startled by the explosion,” McAdams said. “His home suffered significant damage and has been condemned by the building department.”
Local 4 spoke with the man who lives in the adjacent house. He’s doing fine, and the American Red Cross is assisting him with finding temporary housing.
An SUV across the street was left totaled, having been hit heavily by debris, including a shard of wood being lodged in a taillight. Fire investigators combed through the wreckage throughout the afternoon as rain and snow showers fell across the area.
Neighbors continued to drive past the wreckage throughout the day, marveled at the scope of the damage, and were stunned that no one was seriously hurt.
“My daughter said she saw a flash in her window, because her bedroom faces this way,” a neighbor, who identified herself only as Jamie, said. “She saw this instant flash, and then that’s when we went outside.
“All of a sudden you start hearing the sirens going and everything,” she said. “The sirens were already here and everything, but it was just one of the weirdest experiences.”
