Six townhomes were destroyed or damaged Wednesday night in an explosion that rocked a Columbia, Maryland neighborhood Wednesday evening.
Rescuers rushed to the scene of the three-alarm fire in the 12200 block of Sleepy Horse Lane near Columbia Mall shortly after 7:15 p.m. Wednesday, police said.
One neighbor said she thought she had smelled gas beforehand. Terri Clayman called the local utility, BGE, and a utility worker responded.
He quickly told Clayman and the guests she had over for Yom Kippur to evacuate, Clayman told WBAL-TV in Baltimore.
"He went in, very quickly came outside and yelled for us to evacuate and so we started piling out of Terri's house just as we got on front lawn the house next door exploded," said Lou Kaiser, Clayman's guest.
BGE says the quick-thinking utility worker may have saved dozens of lives, WBAL reported.
When firefighters got to the townhouse, one townhouse was "fully engulfed" in flames, firefighters said. The house sustained extensive structural damage; five other units caught fire.
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The BGE worker -- who has not been named by the utility or by authorities -- was hospitalized with burn and blast injuries, and a resident in the area was hospitalized with smoke inhalation. Other neighbors were evaluated for smoke inhalation, but declined to be taken to hospitals. At least one person was rescued from a neighboring unit.
Firefighters got the blaze under control around 10:50 p.m.
But they are still working to determine the cause of the incident, and if it was a gas leak, what caused such a dangerous leak. Several townhouses are still being evaluated for structural stability, authorities said.
