More than a dozen people called 911 to report the deadly gas explosion in Northwest Baltimore last week, telling dispatchers that the blast had demolished houses, blown out neighbors’ windows, shaken the ground and trapped people under the wreckage.
The calls, from as close as across the street and as far as Reisterstown Road Plaza a few blocks away, provide a collective firsthand account of the initial — and sometimes incorrect — information being relayed to emergency crews as they hurried toward the explosion in the 4200 block of Labyrinth Road.
Beyond questions about the location of the blast and whether anyone was hurt or trapped, dispatchers asked each caller whether anyone had heard a hissing or bursting sound, smelled an unusual odor, or saw anything suspicious — the first steps of an ongoing investigation into the cause.
Two people were killed and another seven were injured in the major gas explosion that destroyed three houses and forced another to be condemned. Recordings of the 911 calls were obtained by The Baltimore Sun on Tuesday through a public-records request.
Helene Cofield, who lives across the street, was worried about the people buried in the wreckage, she told a 911 dispatcher on the morning of the explosion.
“It’s terrible,” she said. “It’s people under these houses that blew up. Please hurry.”
When the dispatcher first asked whether anything was burning, Cofield replied no. But a moment later, she saw smoke begin to rise from the rubble.
“Uh-oh,” she said. “A fire’s starting.”
Another caller who identified himself only as Mark called 911 to say he had felt the ground shake from the blast at Reisterstown Road Plaza.
“I was sitting at the Plaza, and a big explosion rocked the whole street,” he said. “Stuff went flying up like 200 feet in the air.”
Mark had been too far away to know whether anyone was hurt or trapped, or to have smelled or seen anything unusual, he told the dispatcher. But judging by the plume of smoke, he doubted anyone inside could have lived through it.
“If anyone was in the house,” he said, “I seriously doubt they survived.”