Weekend explosion in Hay River still under investigation

An explosion at a property in Hay River, N.W.T., was felt across the town on Saturday.

Two people suffered what were deemed non-critical injuries and several homes were damaged. The explosion also forced a temporary evacuation of Beaver Crescent, where the incident happened.

The specific cause hasn't yet been confirmed, and the N.W.T.'s Office of the Fire Marshal is investigating.

The explosion, which happened at about 10:20 a.m. Saturday, blew out the windows of nearby homes and sent a thick plume of black smoke skyward. Over the weekend, the Hay River Community Centre opened as a warming and registration centre.

Hay River resident Jane Groenewegen owns a home on Beaver Crescent, which is normally occupied by tenants. She said luckily, no one was home at the time of the explosion.

"When I sent one of our staff over to check on the house, it was like the house was damaged from the inside out, the windows were blown out. The doors were both completely blown off. Pictures that were hanging on the wall were then on the floor," she said.

Even the anchors in the walls that held the pictures were blown out of the walls, she added.

Meanwhile, the home where she lives is about 300 metres from where the explosion took place.

"The windows in our house were blown open … The hardware was blown off the window. So it was a big explosion," she said.

"Everybody thought it was something that hit their house."

Travis Wright, Hay River's fire chief, responded to the incident.

He said he was at home, about eight kilometres from the incident, when he felt the shockwave. He also thought at first something had happened to his own home, like a car had hit it.

"And then when we looked outside, you'd see the black smoke. So I knew immediately that I had to go," Wright said.

He said when he arrived on scene, one firefighter who lived nearby the scene was already there.

"She was able to articulate to us straight away what had taken place and where we were going. So that was very helpful. And then I got her to start evacuating people," Wright said.

"When I got on scene, you know, there was debris spread out around the neighbourhood, a lot of broken windows around."

He said what was possibly once a garage looked like it had disintegrated.

"And the vehicles were on fire and debris around was on fire. So we arrived on scene, we had a pretty good fire going on just with that," he said.

He said the evacuation was out of caution, "until we understood the risk," and it was done with the help of RCMP.

Then fire crews worked on putting out the fire from "a safe distance."

Wright said there was also a gas line "still flaring." Both the gas and power lines were disconnected from affected properties.

As for the state of the home now, Wright said it's "in pretty rough shape."

"Even the shockwave itself had knocked a lot of debris down in the ceilings, and everything just kind of got a real good shaking, you know, walls and everything in there's just, it's in pretty rough condition," he said, adding there's some damage to the side of the home where the garage was.

He said he couldn't say what exactly happened, other than that "there was some sort of explosion in the garage that removed the garage and spread it out all over the neighbourhood."

Deputy mayor Keith Dohey said over the weekend that emergency repairs had begun on some homes.