Workers replacing a gas line to a west Denver house Tuesday accidentally caused a gas leak that filled the home with natural gas, then exploded.
No one was home at 724 King St. in the Barnum neighborhood when the explosion blew part of the roof off the 6-year-old house just after 3 p.m.
A portion of the north roof was blown over the peak and was resting on the south side. Another piece of roofing was dangling, attached to metal sheathing. The peak was completely open, with some metal exposed.
A neighbor’s truck was damaged, and his birdbath was destroyed, but no other damage was reported.
“Thank God this didn’t happen in the middle of the night,” said Tiffany Smyth, 36, who owns and occupied the house with her mother, Lynn Smyth. “I don’t know if I’d be standing here.”
The Smyths, both artists and muralists, were at their store in the 1400 block of South Broadway when neighbor Barbara Frost drove up and yelled, “Your house has exploded, and the neighborhood is being evacuated. Get in.”
Their cat was in the house at the time, but they found it later in a neighbor’s yard, rattled but not injured.
Tiffany Smyth said Xcel Energy had notified them by mail that their house was scheduled for work on its gas supply line Tuesday.
“They said one of us should stay home today,” said Lynn. “I said we needed to go to work, that the workers could just go into the cellar if they needed to.”
Lewis “Mac” McWilliams, 55, the neighbor to the north and Frost’s brother, was watching the Olympics on television.
“There was a crew with a backhoe and a drilling rig out in the street,” he said. “I saw two workers near the back of the house with shovels. All of a sudden, there were two big explosions. One of the workers looked like all the hair on his head had been burned off. He was rubbing snow on his face. But he said he was OK.
“The gas flames were shooting out of the pipe in the ground,” McWilliams said. “You could hear the gas shooting out, like steam escaping.”
Frost, McWilliams and their mother have owned their house since 1960.
“The house that exploded was only 6 years old,” Frost said. “An old woman lived there forever. When she moved out, it was in such bad shape that they completely rebuilt it.”
Xcel spokesman Mark Stutz said the burned man was a contractor, not an Xcel employee.
Mike McPhee: 303-954-1409 or mmcphee@denverpost.com
