A day after the explosion on Croser Road, the soot and remains are still smoldering, and the traffic on this dead end road is steady. People are driving by slowly and stopping to take pictures of the rubble.
“Two were blown clear out of the house,” Greenbrier County Sheriff James Childers said.
The department is working with the State Fire Marshal’s office to sift through the singed evidence, but the recognizable evidence is limited.
The explosion destroyed the small house leaving siding and insulation in the bordering trees. The house was leveled with only singed appliances and an exposed black basement.
Sheriff Childers says the site looks like a ‘mini Ghent’ referring to an explosion at a gas station in Raleigh County that killed four people in March of 2007. Owners of the home, Terry and Tacy Patterson were blown out of the house. Also injured in the blast were their two adult children Terry Jr. and Tera Patterson, and adult visitors Tiffeny Wiliams and Kelly Wickline.
Childers says the debris reached up to 100 yards away from ground zero shaking some of the neighborhood windows.
Curtic Mcclung lives close by. He was still in bed when he heard the first explosion around 7:00 a.m.
“I just had opened my eyes and there was just this massive explosion,” McClung said. “It started shaking the house.”
He went outside to see what happened, when he turned the corner he saw a massive fire and then heard three more explosions.
“The one girl especially she was hollering for help,” McClung said. “She was in massive pain. The boy they helped him up over the hill. His hair and stuff was burned on this side and then they had one person under a blanket.”
“They was putting socks and stuff over them, so yeah it was pretty bad.”
McClung says the explosion comes as shock to Croser Road just outside of Rainelle.
“It’s really devastating,” he said. “For something like that to happen here shows it can happen here but just thank God it wasn’t something that was close to another home so it could hurt somebody else.”
Investigators are looking into every scenario. There was a propane tank at the house but it was not in use. They also found oxygen bottles at the site and Sheriff Childers says there were kerosene heaters in the home. He’s asked for a toxicology report for some of the people in the home.
“I’ve attended a couple of classes on meth labs and certainly this explosion has all the contents of that but so does the one like it in Ghent,” he said. “That’s what we are referring to and that was a propane deal and it did about the same thing.”
Curtis McClung says the incident has brought a deeper meaning to Thanksgiving.
“I’m going to hold on to mine a little closer. It’s going to make me do that for sure,” he said.
“I’m going to try and let them have a good Thanksgiving just be thankful for what I have because look at the two that’s laying in the hospital with burns on them now.”
“I’m just really thankful for all that I have.”