First came an explosion that witnesses likened to a boom, a bomb or maybe even an quake.
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People more than a mile away reported feeling their homes shake in the blast just before midnight Wednesday night in a working-class neighborhood just two miles from the District of Columbia border. Hospital officials said most of those were released later in the day. Officials said they suspended rescue efforts in the debris and switched to recovery mode.
Dozens have been displaced by the fire late Wednesday night, including families.
Officials said they are looking into the reports of natural gas.
Two bodies were found in the building rubble but police were unable to complete a search because the site needed to be shored up, according to Montgomery County Assistant Police Chief Russ Hamill.
It is unclear which came first, the large fire or the explosion at the Flower Branch Apartments.
“From our investigators, the fire rescue investigators, the ATF investigators, tragically that doesn’t seem that that’s a possibility at this time”, he said. He earlier said that no one still inside the building is expected to be alive. The three bodies that were recovered have not yet been identified.
Thirty-one people were injured and taken to hospitals. He said investigators have accounted for 110 residents of the buildings. “There were, like, people jumping out the window, like screaming for help and kids screaming because a lot of kids were scared”, she told WJLA.
Nine hours after the explosion, firefighters on a ladder truck were still using a hose to put out the last of the fire and smoke still was rising from the building. “Nothing could be done, and she lost her baby there, and up until now they haven’t found him”.
Hampering efforts to get to the bottom of what happened is the incinerated building that remains, which authorities have said is unstable. But he declined to speculate on how many people remain missing; fire officials on Thursday had initially said five to seven people were unaccounted for.
Joy West said she also could smell gas in the area prior to the explosion. Police later said they don’t have a firm number.
Emergency units continue to work with structural engineers to determine the safety of the building.
The injuries the occupants of the apartment complex suffered range from minor to quite serious and include burns and even fractures sustained by persons who had to jump from the windows of the building as fire engulfed it.
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The explosion prompted an outpouring of community support with many volunteers heading to the shelter, including teachers from nearby schools concerned over the fate of their students.
