Two people were seriously burned in an explosion at a home outside Breckenridge where medical marijuana was being grown.
When Summit County firefighters and deputies responded to a fire call about 2:30 a.m. Sunday, they found bloody footprints in the snow and windows, window frames, insulation and other debris scattered in the interior of the home.
They also smelled the odor of fresh marijuana and a type of chemical smell.
After testing the air to determine whether it was safe to proceed, firefighters and deputies entered the home. They found a man who told them he had taken his two seriously injured roommates to the Summit County Medical Center.
The man told them that those in the home were licensed to grow marijuana for medical purposes.
After obtaining a search warrant, investigators entered the home again and found several marijuana registry cards, along with numerous marijuana plants and four empty cases of butane fuel canisters.
The uninjured man told investigators he wasn’t in the room when the explosion occurred but that he believed it was the result of one of his roommates attempting to make hashish — or hash — through a process using butane, which boils at room temperature. Hashish is a marijuana derivative.
The man said his roommate had made hash several times before, but usually did so in the garage.
Jay Nelson, fire marshal for the Red White and Blue Fire Department, said butane should never be used inside a house. “Severe injury or death may result,” he said.
The injured people were transferred to a Denver-area hospital for burn treatment.
Investigators declined to release the identities or the genders of the people injured in the blast, saying that because the home was a legal medical-marijuana facility, the incident is protected by rules governing the privacy of medical records.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
