A gas company was critically injured by the blast, and was immediately flown by air ambulance to a hospital with second- and third-degree burns. He was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
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Debris rests on the ground after a portion of Motel 6 exploded, just after the business had been evacuated due to reports of a gas leak, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2015, in Bremerton, Wash.
Motel guests displaced by the blast obtained lodging from other motels or from the American Red Cross.
Alice Adams, who lives three blocks away, said, “The shaking was bad enough that the neighbors thought a tree fell on their house”.
But three people who were believed to have been staying at the hotel were unaccounted for Wednesday morning, said John Hawkins of the Bremerton Fire Department.
“So something, something went wrong, and again, we’re gonna work with the company as well as the fire department and try to find out exactly what happened”, Strachan said. In addition, Duke said, investigators pinged the cellphones of the missing people, and they showed up “way south of the area”.
The explosion at a Bremerton motel leveled an entire side of a building and now officials are trying to determine what caused the gas line to rupture.
The Tuesday night blast critically injured the gas company worker minutes after the acting hotel manager evacuated the building because she could smell and hear a gas leak.
Motel manager Tonya Hinds told the Kitsap Sun newspaper that a passerby had noticed the leaking gas line.
Hinds said a guest reported seeing someone jump out a window and land on or near the gas line just before the leak.
Local authorities had much help from state and federal ones. One suffered bruised ribs and another a concussion.
Two people are unaccounted for after an explosion demolished part of a Motel 6 in Bremerton, Washington. He says they are recovering at home. “So they’re missing until we go through the whole pile or they call us”. “I mean, my computer, my phone, everything is gone”.
Bremerton is a town of about 39,000 an hour ferry ride West of Seattle.
The blast threw firefighters and gas workers back several feet, injuring one of the gas workers, identified as Larry Jennings, 59.
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The motel, which reopened last fall after extensive remodeling, had about 65 guests in 42 occupied rooms, and the blast destroyed about one-quarter of the building, the hotel manager said.
