US-Rescuers rushed into flames to save nursing home residents after deadly explosion

Nduthu’s sister said she was a great mother to her sons, a great wife, a devout Catholic and very involved in the community. A Kenyan immigrant, she went to nursing school, loved to cook and was a hard worker, her sister, Rose Muema, said.

Nineteen people were still hospitalized Wednesday, Winik said

The explosion 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 with the kitchen and cafeteria was almost entirely destroyed, leaving 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 area, as staff from a hospital next door, nursing home employees and neighbors rushed to help evacuate people. One person was resuscitated at a hospital, officials said.

They found people trapped in stairways and elevator shafts and under rubble, authorities said. Some residents couldn’t walk, and some were in wheelchairs or bed-bound. A second explosion happed as rescues were underway.

Speech therapist Julia Szewczyk described the experience as terrifying and devastating.

She was in a group therapy session in another part of the building when it began to shake. She and other staff rushed to evacuate residents across a street to safety.

“And then the next thing was, to go inside and grab more people,” Szewczyk, 25, said.

They dragged out a bed-bound resident into the cold, then Szewczyk ran back into the burning building twice to grab blankets from a supply closet. One coworker got trapped inside an elevator when the power went out, she said.

Outside, during the rescue, employees had been looking for Nduthu, Szewczyk recalled.

Federal agencies were set to assist in the investigation, but the collapsed walls and roof needed to be cleared first, Winik said.

A utility crew was responding to reports of a gas odor when the explosion happened, 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 blast.

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. Other employees told Szewczyk they smelled gas earlier in the day Tuesday, Szewczyk said

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.

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.

By Associated Press