I just heard about it too and was reading the story. How horrible. I’m assuming they mean 4 confirmed dead, and the number will go up. I couldn’t find out at what time the explosion occurred, only that it was last night–does anyone know? If it was 3 am, it will be more people than at 7 pm, you know?
Only 4 people were killed, and according to the San Francisco Chronicle there is no one still missing, so it’s unlikely that any additional bodies will be found.
Darryl Lict- I hope your sister was not directly impacted.
I looked for a thread this morning and was surprised not to find one. This has certainly dominated the news in the Bay Area.
15 acres around Crestmoor Canyon, this is less than 30 minutes from where I live.
It happened around 5:30pm yesterday, so maybe many people weren’t home from work yet. I’ve heard that as many as 50 homes are just gone, almost 40 people hospitalized with injuries and some very critical condition.
I doesn’t look like that big a catastrophe to me. From the OP I thought I would be looking at, like, a whole oil refinery had blown up and devastated a whole town.
With the specter of earthquakes in California, agencies are used to working without regard to city boundaries. Doc Gurley has a terrific blog describing the horror facing emergency workers. Link
Thank you, all emergency workers. You do an unimaginable job.
Well, therein lies the problem. Seriously, though, look at photos 10, 26, 33, 36, 38, 43, etc. It may not be a Bhopal sized disaster or anything, but that’s a pretty darn big explosion. If I came home and saw not only my home flattened but almost every other one on the block as well, I’d be pretty freaked out.
They’ve reduced the number of destroyed homes from 53 to I think 35, as they were able to get back in. The initial flame was 7 stories high, and burned like that for over an hour before they got the gas shut off. Pretty horrendous. I live across the Bay, and I could swear that I could smell gas last night.
According to the 10 PM news, still 4 dead, but others are still in critical condition. No one reported missing, but they are trying to get a count.
I am happy to say that FEMA is going to pay for 75% of the fire fighting/rescue work - California cities don’t have much money to spare these days. Though they should charge PG&E for it. I was pretty impressed with the speed and effectiveness of the response.