Home demolished in blast, five others sustain damage
« There was no house there. The neighbours behind us saw the hot tub fly up in the air. »
Neighbour Janet HooftRCMP investigators and Terasen Gas have not yet determined the cause of an explosion that demolished a home and damaged five others on a quiet, rural Surrey street.
The blast was so powerful that it blew out windows and doors half a block away and reduced the vacant home to a pile of debris on Saturday afternoon.
No one was injured in the blast.
Janet Hooft, who lives next door to what was the 2,000-square-foot, $1-million house, said she’d been mowing her lawn minutes before it blew.
She happened to go in for a drink, heard what she said sounded like a plane crash into her home and ran outside.
“There was no house there,” she said. “The neighbours behind us saw the hot tub fly up in the air.”
Hooft said the foundation shifted on the house across the street, the damage at that home is estimated to be $60,000.
“The house behind us, I think they’ll have to bulldoze it,” she said.
Hooft and another neighbour, Bram Terris, said the home seemed “weird.”
“It was always vacant,” she said. “It just didn’t add up.”
Terris said people were always coming and going, even though nobody lived in it.
-kristen.thompson@metronews.ca
