A house was destroyed when a fire broke out following an apparent explosion in Calgary early Sunday, officials said, and by evening firefighters were still unable to enter the building to check if anyone was home at the time.
More than 25 people – some of them several blocks away from the house – called 911 to report hearing a loud bang at about 4:20 a.m., Calgary Fire Department spokeswoman Carol Henke said.
“One caller stated that they heard a loud bang and saw smoke and flames coming from a house across the street,” she said. “Another caller said they heard a bang and glass shattering.”
Firefighters arrived on scene to find the house fully engulfed in flames and the fire already starting to spread to neighbouring properties, she said.
In addition to the home where the blast originated, one other home was badly damaged and “will not be reoccupied any time soon,” Henke said. Several others suffered less serious damage, including melted siding and blown-out windows.
By Sunday evening, Henke said the destroyed house was still not structurally safe enough for crews to get inside. Gas lines to the home were capped during the afternoon, and heavy equipment arrived to deconstruct pieces of the house so that investigators could carefully enter.
She said the equipment had begun to work on outer areas like the garage, but investigators still hadn’t been able to set foot inside of what remained of the home.
“It’s just too dangerous to go inside, so at this point we don’t know if there are any injuries or worse,” she said.
Henke said the homeowner was out of the country but she didn’t believe another person, who was a tenant, had been accounted for yet.
Dale Frizzell, whose home backs onto the one that burned, said the owner, a single man, regularly goes to Thailand in the winter.
Frizzell said he hadn’t seen the renter for a week or so.
“My wife had mentioned the other day, ‘I haven’t seen him around’ … We don’t know if he was in there or not. We don’t know,” Frizzell said.
“We’re hoping he was somewhere else, not at home.”
Frizzell said family members, including his five grandchildren, were staying with him before going to the airport. When the sound of the apparent explosion woke them, he wasn’t sure what had happened.
“You know how sometimes planes drop ice? And I thought that first, right?” Frizzell said.
Windows on Frizzell’s home were cracked and siding was melted due to the heat of the fire. His family had to evacuate, and they all waited outside in his van until firefighters gave them the all-clear to return.
Henke said people were evacuated from five nearby homes, adding that by 8 a.m. residents from four of those houses were allowed to return.