Boom

Initially, I wasn't going to blog about this. It's a serious topic, and I didn't think it'd make waves. But once I learned it made national news, I thought it was worth a short blog to reflect and ponder.

Eric and I were watching TV around 11pm last night. Eric was kind of dozing in and out of consciousness, and I was surfing around on my iPad - nothing good was actually on the TV, obviously. Suddenly, there was a shudder on the house, enough to rattle the windows, along with a big 'BOOM!' sound. We both looked at enough other, wondered out loud about what it was, and jumped up, looking out windows and such. The news was just ending, and they didn't say anything about it, so we assumed it was localized in our neighborhood somewhere... but what was it??

It wasn't until about an hour later, as we were heading to bed, that I notice a helicopter hovering over an area somewhere south of us. First, I though it was over the interstate - maybe a truck overturned? Was that the noise?? It made me grab the iPad on my way upstairs and start searching news websites. It didn't take long to find out what the helicopter was hovering over.

"BREAKING NEWS: House Explodes on southside!" Reading further, and turning the TV on, led us to learn that there was a huge explosion that destroyed TWO homes, and then caught neighboring homes on fire. Even crazier was that it was such a huge explosion, it actually knocked other homes right off of their foundations, blew out(inward) windows for blocks, and sent people running outside trying to figure out what happened and what to do. We felt it and it was about 10 miles away! There were a few interviews happening, but there was such little information to be shared, even from neighbors, because so many people were asleep already or at least inside for the night.

So obviously, more photos and news about the explosion has started to trickle through the news outlets today. Surprisingly, only two dead (with quite a few in the hospital, but none life threatening). Still no confirmation on the cause - while most people keep thinking a natural gas explosion, I find it odd that the gas company is getting very defensive in that fact, claiming there were no calls from the area about a leak, nor was there any obvious evidence of that yet. Which you gotta admit, for an explosion that big, even if the house was unoccupied (which it was all day, apparently), it had to be permeating outside of the home at some point that someone would've smelled something. But I could be wrong, I suppose.

As of now, there are a lot of houses that aren't even occupiable - aside from the ones that completely exploded or burned down - others have structural issues, or broken pipes, or a slew of other issues. It looks like a war zone in this once quiet subdivision. It's insane.

Even more insane is to think that this happened out of the blue. Can you imagine, sitting in front of your TV or already in bed and all of the sudden, a house next door just explodes unexpectedly?? What would you do? What would you grab if you had to evacuate at that moment, not knowing when you'd be able to come back - or if you'd be able to come back? I don't think I'd know what to do in such a split second...