NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — Niagara Falls Police are investigating whether a plumber might be blame for a house exploding and going up in flames on 20th street during the dinner hour on Wednesday.
National Fuel said in a statement that testing by the utility company and the State Public Service Commission of all natural gas facilities including the house service lines showed no malfunctions or leaks and that the delivery system had been functioning properly.
However, a police report indicates that National Fuel had been to the home on Wednesday after a tenant moving into an upstairs apartment had summoned the utility to turn on the gas.
According to the report, the tenant told police the responding technician declined to activate the service, after spotting seeping sewage in the home. It notes that according to the tenant, the landlord then summoned a plumber, who turned on the gas anyway.
The tenant then told police they began to smell a gas odor, opened the windows, and left the home to collect more belongings to move in.
The explosion occurred about an hour later.
'Lucky to be alive'
As a wrecking crew was demolishing the home at 820 20th Street on Thursday morning, Sarah Adams, who lived in a lower apartment, could do no more than stand by and watch.
All of her belongings perished in the explosion and fire, from which she and her friend, Robert Tall, had barely escaped with their lives.
The two arrived at the house on Wednesday just before 5 p.m. and immediately smelled a strong odor of gas.
"When I walked up the stairs and into the foyer, the smell was so strong I could taste it," Adams said. "I immediate turned around and started to run off the porch saying, 'It's too strong it's too strong.' "
"She barely got the word strong out when she got blown into me and I ended up here," said Tall, while pointing to a spot on the street in front of the house.
"There was like, wind and glass and everything going by. ... I watched the porch take off into the sky," said Tall, who described it like being in a hurricane.
"It was like we were in a bubble flying off the porch," Adams said. "It was the loudest boom I've ever experience in my life. It was as loud as it was silent. ... It was very surreal."
"It's crazy that I'm alive," Tall said.
Miraculously unharmed, they turned to see the house now turning into an inferno. They thought about trying to re-enter the home to rescues Sarah's neighbor, an elderly woman who lived in another apartment, but who suddenly emerged from the house, with her dog, with barely a scratch on either.
"That old lady came out of the house walking like there was nothing wrong...and all she worried about was having a cigarette," Tall said.
Michael Hooper, a Niagara Falls realtor, was also on the scene Thursday to take pictures and reminisce.
"My grandparents built this house in the late 1920s. They raised nine children in this house," he said.
Hooper's family sold the home seven years ago after his father died.
"Unfortunately the house is gone, but memories live on," he said.
Adams, meanwhile, is now staying with a relative as she contemplates what to do next after having lost all of her belongings.
"But the thing is, all of it is material and we are not. We cannot be replaced and so I'm grateful that we are all OK," Adams said.