One woman was injured Tuesday afternoon in an explosion in a garden-level apartment of a Capitol Hill building.
The explosion, which blew out windows and the front door of the apartment, happened about 3:30 p.m. at 429 E. 14th Avenue, on the Pennsylvania Street side of the building.
Several streets around the incident were blocked off to motor vehicle traffic as firefighters and emergency personnel responded to the blast. Streets were all reopened by 6:15 p.m.
George Yonki, 32, the building superintendent, was working in a garden level unit when the blast occurred.
“It sounded like someone threw a washing machine down a flight of stairs,,” Yonki said.
Yonki went into the garden-level hallway and it was filled with a smoky haze, he said. The hallway lights were shaking from the explosion.
A woman who was inside the apartment staggered out.
She was not bleeding or burned, Yonki said, but she couldn’t speak.
“She was shaking and trembling,” Yonki recalled. “She couldn’t even express words.”
Yonki helped her out of the building and went back inside to the top floor, three stories above the garden level, and began pounding on doors while yelling: “Get out! Get out!”
The injured woman was taken to a local hospital with injuries described as “minor,” said Melissa Taylor, a Denver Fire Department spokeswoman.
Investigators did not initially release information on the cause of the blast. An Xcel Energy natural gas crew was at the scene, as were building inspectors.
Street closures including East 14th Avenue and Grant Street, East 13th Avenue and Logan Street and East Colfax Avenue and Pennsylvania Street, knotted traffic in the area through the evening rush hour.
