No fewer than four people have been killed and another two people are missing after a house explosion in a suburb Northwest of Pennsylvania, authorities said.
Gatekeepers News reports that Pottstown Borough Manager Justin Keller confirmed in a press conference that the explosion occurred just after 8 p.m. in Pottstown, about 40 miles northwest of Philadelphia.
The incident occurred at a home on Washington Street and Butler Avenue. First responders arrived on the scene just after 7 p.m., following a call for an explosion.
Two others were hospitalized, Keller said. Their conditions are unknown.
A pair of twin homes were reported to have been destroyed, according to the Pottstown Mercury. It is not immediately known what caused the explosion.
One local posting on a Facebook group for the area claimed the area had smelt strongly of gas several weeks ago, but there has been no confirmation that the explosion was gas-related.
Police have not yet named those who were killed or injured in the explosion.
People who live in the neighborhood claim to have heard a loud blast and then came out to see a bunch of homes either damaged or destroyed.
“I heard a huge explosion,’ Russell Noll, a resident, said NBC10 after the explosion. “I thought a bomb went off. I thought somebody dropped a bomb somewhere. And then all the sirens started going off. And it wasn’t too far from where I lived.”
“So I started walking towards where the sirens and ambulance were going and it was just a huge explosion around the whole area.”
Another resident, Ashley Miller, said she was sitting on her bed when the back window of the room blew out.
“We thought that either an earthquake was happening or that someone crashed into the building,’ said another neighbor, Katie Washabaugh, to Fox 29.
“Our thoughts and prayers go out to those families,” Superintendent Stephen Rodriguez wrote.
