While fire trucks and police vehicles may be mostly gone from Marshall Street this evening following a late-morning explosion, nearby residents are still wondering what caused it.
The Barrie Fire and Emergency Service spent several hours putting out the fire at 63 Marshall St., in the city’s Allandale area, Saturday afternoon, after what residents called a “loud explosion” that occurred shortly after 11:30 a.m., according to Deputy Fire Chief Eric MacFadden.
Members of the Office of the Fire Marshal (OFM) arrived at approximately 4 p.m., at which time BFES handed over the scene for them to begin their investigation, which left one home completely destroyed and two neighbouring homes with some damage from fire and debris.
The incident also sent one man, who neighbours say lived in the home with his wife and two daughters, to a local hospital with serious injuries.
MacFadden said the man has since been deemed as being in “critical condition” and has been transferred to hospital in Toronto.
Tracey Sand was sitting in her parents’ backyard this morning, located right next door, and had planned on enjoying the hot Saturday afternoon poolside with her dogs when the blast occurred.
“I was sitting in the back and my dad had just gone in for a nap. I was going to have a relaxing day by the pool. Then there was a big, loud, deafening boom. Debris started flying into the backyard. I screamed because it scared me, grabbed the dogs and went into the house to check on my dad,” she told BarrieToday while sitting on the grass next to the Marshall Street home. “I made sure he was OK, because that was the side of the house that his bedroom is on.”
With black smoke and flames billowing from the home next door, the father and daughter were able to get out safely, and made their way across the street, where they were welcomed in by neighbours.
“They brought us in, gave us air conditioning, fed him, and gave us water,” she said, adding they are both still in a bit of shock. “It’s something right out of a movie. A house just doesn’t explode every day.”
Her father is currently back at her home in the city’s south end, she said, adding she has also spoken to her mother, who is set to return from a trip tomorrow.
“She is obviously in shock. She could not believe what happened. I will bring her by when she’s back.”
While Sand doesn’t know the next-door neighbours well, she described them as a young family with two teenage daughters.
“One of the daughters cuts my dad’s lawn for him because he can’t do it anymore … and they’d often come for a swim in my parents’ pool, so my parents know them better than I do,” she said, adding she doesn’t believe the wife or the children were home at the time of the explosion. “As far as I know, the wife and two girls were away, but I am not sure about their dogs. They had two dogs as well.”
Like everyone on the street, Sand is worried about what caused the explosion in the first place, and said crews have since turned off the gas to several homes “out of an abundance of caution.”
Despite appearing calm on the outside, Sand admitted she was in shock.
“It’s just surreal. You’re sitting out back relaxing one minute and the house beside you explodes the next,” she said. “I lived here during the tornado in the ’80s, but this is the craziest thing to happen.”
Andy and Joanne Wilcox live across the road and a few houses down, and were inside at the time of the explosion.
“It was just huge. I knew immediately something had exploded. It shook the house,” said Joanne. “I looked out back and couldn’t see anything, and then (my son) looked out front and realized what was going on. We looked up the road and everything was just engulfed in flames.”
After checking on his mother to ensure she was OK, Andy threw his shoes on and ran up the road to see what he could do to help.
“I ran, thinking there was going to be a door to go into, but there was just nothing left of the house. There were already several neighbours who were pulling the man out of the debris. There was nothing anybody could do. I don’t even know how they were able to pull that man from the rubble or how they were even able to see him,” he said, saying the man appeared to have sustained severe burns to most of his body.
“They had to drag him across the asphalt and away. It all happened so fast. The flames were almost 50 feet high.
“There were, like, 100 people around wanting to help, but the whole house was gone. It’s not like there was even anything to go in to look for anybody because there was nothing to go into. It was like a movie.”
Crews were able to knock down the fire relatively quickly, said MacFadden, adding despite the soaring temperatures today, firefighters managed to keep their cool and get the blaze under control.
“It’s hot. That’s obviously a big concern for us. At one point we had six crews here. Then we were able to initiate getting some other crews in. It is important we rotate them, especially on a hot day like this,” he said. “We had our paramedic friends here to take care of us if anybody needed them.”
Homes on both sides of where the explosion occurred sustained damage, and some debris also landed across the road, said MacFadden, noting crews were working to maintain the scene for the OFM to allow its officials to conduct their investigation.
“There is debris everywhere. You can see the garage on the house (to the right) caught on fire, and some of the roof of the house is on (the one to the left) and it was on fire. Then it’s about protecting the exposures as well, which crews did a great job to make sure we didn’t lose any other homes to the fire.”