A massive explosion and fire leveled a Silver Spring, Maryland, apartment complex with a blast that could be felt a mile away, injuring more than 30 people, including three firefighters, and forcing nearly 100 people from two buildings with some residents tossing their children from windows.
Authorities reported no fatalities, but crews had shifted into search mode Thursday morning, seeking to account for five to seven residents of the two adjacent buildings at the Flower Branch Apartments on Piney Branch Road. Authorities said there were 14 units in each building.
“People were dropping children and jumping out of other windows,” Montgomery County Fire Chief Scott Goldstein said of the fire. “Everybody was getting out of the building as rapidly as possible.”
Goldstein said during a briefing around 6:20 a.m. ET that a K-9 team searching the rubble of the apartment complex had a “hit.” Goldstein said it could indicate someone is trapped in the debris.
Investigators, meanwhile, sought to determine the cause of the inferno that began late Wednesday at the buildings, called 8701 and 8703, which were flatted to street level in some places. The blast blew a gaping hole in parts of the buildings, showering fragments of wood, glass and bricks at least 50 yards and echoing up to a mile away.
Corey Price, who lives in an apartment building next to the location of the explosion, said he woke up after someone frantically knocked on his window.
“People were screaming for help and crying and screaming. It was really bad,” Price said.
Montgomery County fire Battalion chief Dorcus Howard Richards said several of those injured were transported to local hospitals. The residents’ injuries ranged from minor to serious, Goldstein said. Some had respiratory injuries from smoke, and others had burns and fractures from jumping out of windows.
Fire department spokesman Pete Piringer said in a tweet that 160 firefighters and EMS workers, from Montgomery County and beyond, were on the scene at the mass casualty incident. Firefighters made many rescues of people trapped inside an apartment, he added.
Howard Richards said firefighters arrived on the scene shortly after midnight. The fire quickly grew from two to three alarms. She said firefighters in a nearby station heard the explosion.
“It’s going to be a long, extended investigation to figure out what caused this fire,” Howard Richards said.
Goldstein, the fire chief, said that there were natural gas furnaces and stoves in each of the units, but authorities don’t know what might have caused the blaze. It took at least an hour and 45 minutes for the fire be brought under control with the assistance of Washington Gas helping to turn off gas to the building.
He said building managers and the fire department had not received reports of problems before the blast and fire occurred.
A debris field outside the collapsed buildings extended about 50 yards to a parking lot across the street, and included shattered glass, bricks, concrete and wood. The debris appeared to include an apartment door that was sitting on a knoll.
Willie Morales, a resident of the apartment complex, was walking across Piney Branch Road from a chicken restaurant when he collapsed to the ground on his stomach in fear from the loudest explosion he ever heard.
“It was one big boom, like nothing I’d ever heard,” Morales said. When he decided it was safe to rise to his feet, he saw flames coming from the basement and first floor of the apartment building in front of him.
Morales said he tried to bang on windows and to tell people to get out. He said he was screaming: “Fire! Fire! You have to get out!” in English and Spanish. “I tried to knock on the door and windows,” he said. “I’ve never seen a fire like this in my life.”
The gas company was on the scene and workers controlled the gas-fed fire, Piringer said. By about 1:45 a.m., firefighters had knocked down most of the fire, but the flames continued to smolder into the daylight hours.
Goldstein said the fire department will bring in heavy equipment to shore up the damage buildings and sift through the rubble.
Officials from Montgomery County and the American Red Cross set up a temporary shelter at the Long Branch Recreation Center, near the scene of the fire. Paul Carden, regional disaster officer for the Red Cross, said there were about 60 to 70 people at the location.
He said the Red Cross had set up cots in the gymnasium and was preparing to begin helping people find more permanent shelter. Red Cross expected to be on the scene for several days.
“The number of households impacted is significant,” Carden said. “And the impact is more emotional because it was an explosion. I was at the scene and there’s someone’s shoe here, someone’s sock there and someone’s papers over there.”
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By Clarence Williams and Justin Jouvenal, The Washington Post
