A failed attempt to jerry-rig a propane tank for cooking and
heat caused an explosion that blew the roof off a house on Lovers
Lane Friday, leaving three residents with serious burns,
authorities said.
A failed attempt to jerry-rig a propane tank for cooking and heat caused an explosion that blew the roof off a house on Lovers Lane Friday, leaving three residents with serious burns, authorities said.
Luis Rocha, 25, and Romualdo Hernandez, 21, were flown to San Jose Medical Center with third-degree burns to their arms and chest, and Michael Hinds, 46, was taken to Hazel Hawkins Hospital with lacerations and burns to his face, according to San Benito County Sheriff Sgt. Scott Becker.
“It blew the apartment up. It blew the roof up and then the roof came back down,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s amazing no one was killed, just amazing… It’s the worst one I’ve ever seen blow up and have nobody get killed.”
The three residents were living in a small apartment consisting of a kitchen, bedroom and bathroom, in a house that had been sectioned off into several separate living quarters at 7470 Lovers Lane, Becker said.
Because they had just moved in and there was no gas service, the three men decided to illegally hook up a five-gallon propane tank until a professional hooked up the gas either Monday or Tuesday, Becker said.
“They were trying to jerry-rig the gas to have heat and stove and hot water for the weekend,” he said. “But they didn’t know how to do it and they blew themselves up.”
They hooked the tank into the gas line, without any safety precautions, which allowed propane to leak into the apartment for about 10 to 15 minutes, Becker said.
When they couldn’t get the pilot to light they pushed one of the starters on the stove that lights the burners, thinking it would light the pilot on the propane tank, which caused the huge explosion, Becker said.
“They had all this gas in the air… If they had shut the gas off and opened the windows up for awhile, they wouldn’t have blown themselves up,” he said.
Rocha and Hernandez were both inside the kitchen, standing at the stove, when the explosion occurred, but Hinds was in the bedroom and didn’t receive as serious injuries, he said.
No one else was hurt in the explosion, although there were other people in other sections of the house, Becker said. The explosion caused total damage to the entire house, putting a four-foot hole in the ceiling above the stove and blowing all the windows out and the doors off, he said.
Code Enforcement red-tagged the entire complex as being uninhabitable, Becker said.
“I don’t know if they’ll ever be able to live in it again,” he said.
Everyone living in the house sought shelter with relatives and Red Cross was not needed, he said.
