Video: Huge Explosion in Maryland Apartment Building Hospitalizes 10 Residents, Damages 24 Homes
20:57 GMT 16.11.2022 (Updated: 17:08 GMT 31.07.2023)
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For the third time in six years, a gas explosion has destroyed residential buildings in Montgomery County, Maryland. The dangerous industry is minimally regulated, with antiquated pipelines and an overburdened federal safety agency that uses regulations written by the companies they’re intended to govern.
Fire and rescue officials arrived at the Pacific Oaks Condominium in Gaithersburg, Maryland, on Wednesday morning following reports of an explosion and found a massive fire raging inside of several collapsed housing units.
Video from the scene showed flames leaping up the wreckage and black smoke billowing into the sky.
“I was bad,” one neighbor told me when I asked what it was like to witness this scene “just bad.” Here is a bit of the video she took pic.twitter.com/7r2btXo34e
— Kate Amara (@kateamaraWBAL) November 16, 2022
🚨#BREAKING: Multiple people injured after a Massive gas explosion
— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) November 16, 2022
📌#Gaithersburg | #Maryland
Emergency crews are on scene after a massive gas explosion that exploded at a condo complex In Maryland injuring up to 12 people with 2 children it’s currently under investigation pic.twitter.com/rmM7jYbe7c
"It felt like we were bombed,” a man who lives nearby told local media. "My heart goes out to everyone."
Video later emerged of the explosion from a nearby security camera, but it did not capture an image of the fireball itself.
WATCH: Backyard surveillance video has surfaced of this morning's explosion fire at the Potomac Oaks Condominiums in Gaithersburg, Md.
— Kevin Lewis (@KevinLewis7News) November 16, 2022
We're awaiting a press conference to learn if anyone was injured or died.
This happened along the 800 block of Quince Orchard Boulevard. pic.twitter.com/VNTiTtgglk
The situation was described by local media as a “mass casualty incident,” and 10 people were transported to area hospitals with injuries, four of whom were children, with two of the adults suffering from traumatic injuries. However, there were no reported deaths when this story went to print.
Most of the blaze was reportedly quelled by firefighters in about 40 minutes, although a small gas-fueled fire in the basement of the building persisted for several hours.
Montgomery County Fire and Rescue told media there was no firm conclusion about the cause of the fire, and Washington Gas said it had turned off natural gas to the area. Locals said they had smelled gas prior to the explosion, but no call to 911 emergency services was ever placed.
The blast has damaged some 24 units in four separate buildings, which had all been evacuated.
A nearby school, Brown Station Elementary, was not affected by the blast, but students were dismissed early on Wednesday, with several of them living in the community.
The explosion was the third in an apartment building in Montgomery County since 2016, when a massive explosion in Silver Spring leveled an entire apartment complex, killing seven people. According to an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, that explosion was caused by a faulty vent and regulator on a gas line.
Another blast occurred in nearby Lyttonsville in March 2022, hospitalizing 10 people and displacing more than 100. The cause was later determined to be a gas pipe.
As Sputnik has reported, the country’s gas infrastructure is aging and brittle, with the DoT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) burdened by a shortage of regulators to monitor safety and a set of regulations written under the watchful eye of the industrial giants they are expected to oversee - a situation one watchdog characterized as “like the fox designing the hen house."
