A suspected dryer explosion started a fire that destroyed a home at 2411 S. St. Paul St. and seriously injured a man Wednesday afternoon.
Denver Fire Department spokesman Lt. Phil Champagne said the homeowner smelled gas when he got home but proceeded to put items in an electric clothes dryer.
When the homeowner switched the dryer on, it exploded, seriously injuring him.
“It was loud — really, really loud,” said Lori Marks-Connors, a neighbor who lives across the alley. “Stuff was popping off the (electrical) wires above the house, and it was really weird.”
Marks-Connors said immediately after the explosion, she got in her car and drove around the block to the front of the house. She said she saw the badly injured homeowner come out of his front door.
“He looked at me weird, and I asked him, ‘Are you OK?’ ” Marks- Connors said. “I didn’t know what to do.”
Other neighbors described the homeowner, a man in his mid-50s, as badly burned, with skin peeling from his legs and arms as he walked from the house.
His face also appeared to have been covered in ash.
The homeowner was rushed to a local hospital, where information on his condition has not been released.
No one else was in the home at the time of the explosion, Champagne said, and officials are trying to track down the man’s wife and two teenage children.
According to neighbors, a dog, cat and bird also lived in the home. The cat was rescued, but the family’s dog, an English sheepdog named Frankie, and the bird are missing.
The explosion is under investigation.
Anna Haislip: 303-954-1638 or ahaislip@denverpost.com
