{"id":40956,"date":"2025-04-13T16:38:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-13T21:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=40956"},"modified":"2025-04-14T02:42:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T07:42:12","slug":"six-injured-and-24-properties-damaged-in-texas-house-explosion-say-officials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=40956","title":{"rendered":"Six injured and 24 properties damaged in Texas house explosion, say officials"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Authorities investigate after residents as far as 28 miles away report hearing a boom as Austin house collapses<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">A house explosion in Austin,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/texas\">Texas<\/a>, destroyed the residence and damaged 24 nearby properties, injuring six people \u2013 including two firefighters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Around 11.25am CDT, residents across Austin reported hearing&nbsp;<strong>a&nbsp;<\/strong>boom and feeling an explosion in the area. \u201cIt rattled my windows and building,\u201d one person&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/modernidiots_\/status\/1911456041121820974\">posted on social media<\/a>&nbsp;with an image of a plume of smoke rising into the air. Residents as far away as Georgetown \u2013 about 28 miles to the north \u2013 reported hearing the explosion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Austin fire department has&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/AustinFireInfo\">confirmed<\/a>&nbsp;that six people \u2013 including two firefighter \u2013 were injured in the blast, which collapsed the house. Two of the injured were from the house, said Shannon Koesterer, spokesperson for Austin-Travis county EMS. One was in critical condition and the other in serious condition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Koesterer said a person in a nearby home was one of the injured and is listed in critical condition as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Power was out for a time in the surrounding area but has been restored, said Thayer Smith, assistant chief of the Austin fire department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cWe\u2019re going to be here for hours,\u201d Smith said on Sunday afternoon. \u201cThe main street will probably be opened, you know, probably within the next hour, but this street will be closed for the rest of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Emergency officials were investigating the source but say they think the explosion that caused the house to collapse was caused by a gas explosion, possibly propane, KVUE news reported. The Texas Gas Service confirmed the house did not have natural gas service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Carol Hassell, who lives in the neighborhood, spoke with CBSAustin and said she heard a \u201cloud boom\u201d when the explosion happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cI thought maybe a branch had fallen down on my roof,\u201d Carol Hassell said. \u201cI went out in the backyard, and the back door had been blown open, and I didn\u2019t see anything on the house. I came out to the front, and then I realized all my windows had been blown out and the front door, and there\u2019s extensive damage to some of the ceilings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Hassell, who was preparing to list her home for sale later this month, said her garage doors were blown in, as well as the deadbolts on her locks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cI\u2019m just glad I\u2019m OK,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2025\/apr\/13\/austin-texas-house-explosion\">theguardian<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Authorities investigate after residents as far as 28 miles away report hearing a boom as Austin house collapses A house explosion in Austin,&nbsp;Texas, destroyed the residence and damaged 24 nearby properties, injuring six people \u2013 including two firefighters. Around 11.25am CDT, residents across Austin reported hearing&nbsp;a&nbsp;boom and feeling an explosion in the area. \u201cIt rattled [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":40957,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5784],"tags":[2536,21502,1298],"class_list":["post-40956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-explosion","tag-house","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40958,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40956\/revisions\/40958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}