BALTIMORE (WMAR) — Wednesday, 14 911 calls from last week's gas explosion in Northwest Baltimore were released. They paint a frantic scene on Labyrinth Road that Monday morning. People are confused and scared as they assess the damage and try to get help for their neighbors.
Here are some excerpts from several calls:
"It’s all gone, the houses are gone."
"We need an ambulance and police over at 4231 right now. Please. A house blew up and it blew out everybody's windows, and some people [are in] there under the debris.“
"Someone was hollering. I heard screaming."
"All we heard was our glass shattering, like somebody threw a bomb in here."
"3 whole houses, maybe more just crumbled down. All you see in debris."
The city's emergency manager said the first calls came in around 9:42 that Monday morning. Just 2 minutes later, the first fire unit was on scene. In all, the city had 20 fire trucks and 15 ambulances helping, along with 23 units from Baltimore County and one from Howard County.
The blast killed two people and sent seven others to the hospital. Today the emergency manager said of those seven, five have been discharged, one is in critical condition and one is stable.
The Baltimore City Fire Department is still investigating the cause of the gas explosion. BGE found that its equipment was operating safely and there were no leaks to cause the explosion. BGE said an analysis of one of the meters was indicative of some type of issue beyond BGE on customer-owned gas equipment.
One caller also hinting that there might have been a warning sign.
"I smelled gas when I went to the store."
BGE said they did not get any reports of a gas odor from this area on the day of the explosion.
