By John Matthews
WMAL.com
SILVER SPRING, MD (WMAL/AP) — An explosion and fire that destroyed an apartment building last week was accidental and caused by a maintenance worker who cut a gas line instead of a waste pipe, an official said Monday.
Montgomery County Fire Chief Scott Goldstein said his department cannot say what specifically ignited the fire in which 14 people were hospitalized. Goldstein said his department is wrapping up the investigation at the site.
“All kinds of things make the opportunity for a spark or ignition source, which is why we won’t and have been unable to determine what the ignition source was,” Goldstein said during a news conference.
Firefighters responded to the Friendly Garden Apartments in Silver Spring about 10:30 a.m. on Thursday.
According to Goldstein, the maintenance worker was trying to fix a clogged drain in an apartment, using a snake to remove debris and sort out the clog. The worker went to the unit below that apartment and cut what he believed to be a drain waste pipe to remove the clog and put a cap on the pipe.
The maintenance worker went back to the first apartment when a flash fire occurred. The apartment resident was hurt, and both persons were leaving the building and had reached a back stairwell when the explosion occurred, Goldstein said.
Of the 14 people taken to hospitals for treatment, three of them were initially listed in serious condition. Since the explosion, 12 people have been discharged from the hospital and one person remains in critical condition. All residents of the apartment complex have been accounted for, officials said.
The mix-up over the wrong pipe being cut has prompted Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich to call for new regulations requiring exposed pipe work to be properly labeled. He says the cut gas pipe “was indistinguishable, pretty much, from the other pipes in there. You wouldn’t have looked at it and said ‘This was a gas pipe, this was a water pipe.’”
Three of the six buildings in the Friendly Garden complex were deemed unsafe to occupy. At least 150 people have been displaced.
The Associated Press contributed content for this report.
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