(Newswire.net — February 25, 2015) — Stafford Township, N.J. – Residents of the Stafford Township in New Jersey had reported a strong smell of natural gas. The residents called the fire department after sensing the rotten-egg smell combined with the gas. Emergency crews and gas company personnel responded and began evacuating 75 to 100 nearby homes.
Fire Chief Jack Johnson and his fellow firefighters, along with police officers and the gas company workers was going from house to house looking for the source of the leak.
Johnson was standing about 50 feet outside a home under renovation when the large explosion occurred. The nearby house was literally blown away sending small and larger wooden projectiles into the sky and across the neighborhood.
A blast knocked several people on their backs and pounded their eardrums. Glass, wood and insulation rained down as strands of pink fiberglass hung from the pine trees across the street.
“It happened so quickly, the explosion, debris all around us coming from nowhere,” Johnson said. “It knocked you off your feet, a shock wave, the concussion of it. It’s something I never want to experience again.”
According to the media, 15 people were injured in the blast, two of them critically. Video from the police cruiser dash camera, caught everything.
Johnson was one of six firefighters and two emergency medical service technicians who got minor injuries. All but one had been treated and released from hospitals by Tuesday evening.
Nearest to the house when it blew up – 20 feet – were Gas Company workers. Seven of them were injured, including two critically.
Reportedly, cars parked across the street suffers substantial damages. Stafford Police Capt. Tom Dellane said houses on either side were badly damaged in the blast, some other homes located within several blocks of the blast also were damaged.
“It looks like a war area,” said Max Von Ness, a plowing contractor who was nearby when the explosion occurred. “It’s just destruction. There’s debris all over the place.”
“It was kind of like a mini-earthquake,” he said.
The cause of the 10:32 am explosion that left some 300 homes in New Jersey without gas has not yet been determined.