Construction crews worked to clear the collapsed walls and roof from a Pennsylvania nursing home Wednesday to help investigators find the cause of an explosion that killed a resident and employee, and set off a dramatic evacuation amid falling debris and shooting flames.
The Tuesday afternoon blast sent 20 others to hospitals, including one person in critical condition. The rest of the employees and 120 residents were accounted for after hours of searching the wreckage, said Police Chief Charles Winik of Bristol Township.
Survivors were transferred to nearby nursing home properties, the police chief and health officials said.
The Bucks County coroner's office said the employee who died was 52-year-old Muthoni Nduthu. Authorities didn't immediately identify the resident who died. Both victims were women.
Officials said they didn't yet know the cause of the blast at the Bristol Health & Rehab Center, even though a utility crew had been on site investigating a reported gas leak when the blast occurred. It was so powerful that it shook nearby houses for blocks in Bristol, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of Philadelphia.
A wing of the facility that housed the kitchen and cafeteria was almost entirely destroyed, with the roof caved in, sections of walls completely missing and windows on adjoining walls blown out. Debris littered the grounds.
Winik said the scale of the casualties could have been much worse. Police and firefighters flooded in from the region, as staff from a hospital next door and neighbors rushed to help evacuate the injured. One person was resuscitated at a hospital, officials said.
Firefighters braved a heavy gas odor, flames, collapsing walls and even a second explosion to rescue people trapped in stairways and elevator shafts and under rubble, authorities said.
"I've never seen such heroism," Winik told reporters Wednesday. "They were running into a building that I could — from 50 feet away — could still smell gas, and walls that looked like they were going to fall down."
Some residents couldn't walk or speak, and some were in wheelchairs, the police chief said.
Nineteen people were still hospitalized Wednesday, Winik said. Federal agencies were set to assist in the investigation as crews removed the wreckage.
"Until we excavate the area and remove the walls and roof that collapsed, we won't have any idea of what may have occurred in there," Winik said.
The blast at the 174-bed nursing home happened shortly after a utility crew responded to reports of a gas odor at the facility, authorities have said. The local gas utility, PECO, said the crew shut off natural gas and electric service to the facility, but didn't know if utility equipment or gas was involved in the explosion.
Willie Tye, who lives about a block away, said he was watching a basketball game when he heard a loud boom.
"I thought an airplane or something came and fell on my house," he said. When he went outside, he saw "fire everywhere" and people fleeing the building.
State records show the facility was cited for multiple violations during its most recent inspection in October by the Pennsylvania Department of Health, including failing to provide accurate floor plans, properly maintain stairways and fire extinguishers on one level. Inspectors also cited the facility for lacking required smoke barrier partitions designed to contain smoke across floors.
Medicare's overall rating of the facility is listed as "much below average," with poor ratings for health inspections in particular.
Musuline Watson, who said she was a certified nursing assistant at the facility, told WPVI-TV that staff smelled gas over the weekend, but did not initially suspect a serious problem because there was no heat in that room.
The nursing home recently became affiliated with Ohio-based Saber Healthcare Group, which called the explosion "devastating" and said in a statement that facility personnel promptly reported the gas odor to the local gas utility before the blast.
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