ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. – Just after 9 a.m. Monday, people miles away from a house explosion in north St. Louis County reported hearing a loud boom.
“Flying debris hit me, but nothing cut me. I thought it was just a bomb went off,” Stanley Hampton said.
The rear of his condo abuts Evan Aire Drive, where five houses were destroyed in an explosion on Monday.
“All of my glass doors came out. My glass windows, all of it came out. There’s debris everywhere,” Hampton said.
Jotham Nixon was in his basement three houses down from the explosion.
“Furniture, ceiling, and infrastructure was messed up,” Nixon said. “Insulation.”
In the surrounding neighborhood, several people were reportedly trapped as the explosion warped doorways. Nixon helped pull his neighbor through an open window just in time.
“He had a small fire in one of the other rooms and we said we need to get him out as soon as we can. Thankfully, we were able to do that because 10 minutes later, it was fully engulfed,” Nixon said.
A block away, stepping over fallen photos, Douglas Hester walked FOX 2 News through his home. The explosion blew his kitchen cabinets open, knocked pieces of a chandelier onto the ground, and broke multiple windows.
“We’re all blessed,” he said.
It is a sentiment shared by many in the neighborhood on Monday, while people start to clean up from the destruction.
“It makes you want to cry. It hurts like everything you worked for and now it’s just all gone,” Hampton said.
The American Red Cross responded to the area to help families affected by the blast.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
