Blast damages neighbours' homes, causes morning of confusion
Neighbours living near the site of an explosion, which destroyed several homes in east Ottawa Monday morning, are now dealing with property damage after an onset of confusion and panic.
Five people were sent to hospital after an explosion took down multiple homes under construction off Tenth Line Road just before 6:30 a.m. Two of those people were rescued from rubble.
Seven residents were also treated on site for minor injuries and released. Emergency crews said the blast was caused by a gas leak.
Divya Suri was asleep in her home's second storey, along with the rest of her family including her two-year-old son, when the explosion happened.
"It felt like an earthquake," she said. "Then we just rushed down. [I] just took my baby, I just ran down."
As the family spilled out onto the street, they were greeted by other confused neighbours. Suri said they could smell smoke "but we couldn't figure it out ... exactly what it was."
Suri, who lives a street over from the blast site, at first believed only her front door was damaged. When she attempted to leave for work later that morning the family discovered significant damage to the garage: windows blown out from the door, the ceiling cracked, and the access door from the home broken off its frame.
"It was just a big bang with [a] big noise and it just shook everything," said Mayank Sharma, a friend who lives nearby.
"One of our nieces, she just woke up and she started crying ... because we all were fast asleep and just, we couldn't figure it out."
Sharma also thought it was an earthquake at first, or possibly even a plane crash, but couldn't see any of the smoke. Even as police, firefighters and paramedics started flooding the area, his family was still unsure of what had happened.
After assessing his own home, Sharma went to check on Suri's family.
Blast felt for kilometres
Amjad Faza, who lives off of Tenth Line Road, was studying when the blast went off. He described the moment he walked through his front door, which had been blasted open, as one of chaos.
"When I came outside, there was just like snow everywhere. It was really hard to see and then you could just hear people screaming across the street, that people were asking for help and stuff like that," he said.
It's unclear how widespread the damage was, but Ontario Liberal MPP Stephen Blais posted on Twitter: "Praying that nobody was hurt. This shook the whole house," which he said was more than one kilometre away.
Ottawa police and the fire marshal's office said they are investigating the cause of the blast.
