“I can’t even explain it. It was just so loud. I thought my house had exploded. My house shook. It felt like it was right next to me.”
A woman living on Bayfield Crescent in Newlands has described the aftermath of Monday’s house explosion that shook neighbouring properties and left a home destroyed.
“I thought something had exploded in my house,” she told the Compass on Tuesday. “I was frying chicken in my deep fryer so the first thing I thought it was that.”
The neighbour, whose windows shattered in the blast, said she opened her bedroom door and ran out to check on her dogs, rabbits and cats in her back yard, who were in shock.
She then dashed to the front and shouted to her daughter-in-law who was in the house to get dressed and get outside.
“My video camera has me running out the house and hollering: ‘What the F is that’,” she said. “At the same time, stuff was just dropping – you can see it in my yard.”
The neighbour told the Compass of the alarming moment she saw the destroyed home.
“And then I just saw it,” she said. “I just ran down the road and when I got down everyone was just coming out their house looking.
“So, I went to the yard and started shouting, ‘Is there anyone in the house? Anyone in the house?’
“I saw the guy that was in the house walking around the back and then I saw a woman and a baby just standing in all the dirt and stuff dropping.”
‘I took the baby’
She said she called to the woman ‘Miss, you need to come out here, come out’, but she just stood holding the baby in shock.
“So, I made my way through and tried to get her to step forward and she wouldn’t move, so I was like ‘Give me the baby, miss’ and I took the baby out of her hands.”
The neighbour said the dazed woman grabbed onto her arm as she led her away from the property and to her home, where she called 911 and waited until the ambulance arrived.
“And after that happened, I started thinking, what if my son was walking home from school, suppose it was 3:30pm in the evening?” she told the Compass.
Police and the fire service are continuing investigations into the cause of the explosion which also damaged surrounding homes, and left four people injured.
Anyone who may need emotional support following the blast can call the Department of Counselling Services at 949-8789 or email [email protected]
Anyone whose property was impacted and needs assistance or who would like to assist those involved, can call the Newlands community office on 943-7652.
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