A massive explosion in downtown Pueblo demolished two buildings Thursday afternoon, killing one person and injuring about a half-dozen more.
Woody Percival, spokesman for the Pueblo Fire Department, said the explosion about 2:20 p.m. at the Branch Inn, 301 S. Union Ave., trapped five people in the restaurant and two others in the neighboring Classic Boutique.
Michelle Peulen, spokeswoman for Parkview Hospital in Pueblo, said six people were treated there with injuries ranging from serious crush injuries to minor lacerations. She confirmed that one of the patients had died.
Rochelle DeVargas, spokeswoman for St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center, said one victim, identified as Sarah Salazar, 30, was being treated there in fair condition.
At 6:30 p.m., following several hours of effort, rescuers reached an elderly man in the basement of the demolished Branch Inn, Percival said. The injured man was handed on a stretcher from one rescuer to another, said the spokesman. About 26 people helped in the rescue.
Percival said searchers continued to comb the rest of the basement Thursday evening, searching for more victims.
Michael Pacheco, owner of nearby Papa Jose’s Union Cafe, said the explosion was accompanied by a boom and shock wave that he thought moved his restaurant off its foundation.
“It looked like a war zone, with a big mushroom cloud above the Branch Inn,” Pacheco said. “It looked like pictures of 9/11.”
Pacheco said that as he raced down the street toward the Branch Inn, debris and dirt floated down from the sky.
He said the first thing that he saw was a man covered in soot who had been blown into the street. He said he didn’t see the man at first because he was lying in the soot-filled street.
At the demolished building, he said, another soot-covered man stood up in the middle of the ruins and hollered: “There was a gas leak.”
“He crawled out of the rubble and got halfway into the street and collapsed,” Pacheco said.
Pacheco said he saw a young man digging through the rubble of the Classic Boutique.
“He said there was a girl buried there and thought there had been three people in the shop,” Pacheco said.
Percival said the four people in the Branch Inn whom rescuers reached first were conscious and able to speak as they were loaded into ambulances.
He said a fifth person, who had been in the Classic Boutique, was rescued and taken to a hospital.
A sixth person, a woman, was trapped under debris at the boutique for about two hours.
Fire Chief Chris Riley said the person who died was a woman in the Classic Boutique.
The explosion occurred in Pueblo’s historic district, which is lined with restaurants and boutiques, Percival said. He said the explosion occurred one block south of the spot where Barack Obama spoke Nov. 1 before about 15,000 people.
The restaurant, which sits on a corner, exploded with tremendous force, sending debris flying 80 feet across South Union Avenue into buildings across the street, said the Fire Department spokesman.
Pacheco said the front door of the restaurant was blown across the street and hit a car stopped at a stop sign. The occupants of the car were not hurt, Pacheco said.
Five engine companies, an aerial ladder company and many ambulances went to the scene, Percival said. Also assisting was a crew from Fort Carson specializing in rescuing victims from collapsed structures.
Percival, a fire inspector, said the blast was “consistent with a natural-gas explosion.”
He said members of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation arrived about 4:45 p.m., and a federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives team was expected later Thursday.
Pacheco said the Branch Inn was a Pueblo institution and had a beautiful art deco bar. He said that according to local folklore, there was a tunnel underneath Pueblo that led to the Branch Inn, where booze was smuggled into the bar during Prohibition.
