A Catskills home was destroyed this weekend in an explosion caused by a gas leak.
The incident occurred without any warning Saturday night in Monticello, in Sullivan County, around 11 p.m., shortly after a family had moved into the house.
“I was laying down and all of a sudden the whole house went boom and shook. [We] ran out the door,” Harold Ronk told NBC News.
Several family members reported smelling gas before the blast.
Nine people and two pets managed to escape, but one person required hospitalization with burns. They were taken to Garnet Health Medical Center in Wallkill in unknown condition.
There was no active fire when first responders arrived, but walls had crumbled, windows were blown out and the foundation was cracked.
Firefighters traced the cause of the blast to two 100-gallon propane tanks in the basement.
“The gas line had started leaking and had filled the basement up with gas and then exploded,” Jon Wells, assistant chief of the Monticello Fire Department, said.
It’s unclear how full the tanks were before the incident. The building was condemned as unsafe by inspectors after the explosion.
“About an hour ago we were moving stuff in. Now we can’t get our stuff out because it’s condemned,” Ronk told NBC New York.
Three people were seriously injured in a similar house explosion in Kiamesha Lake, also in Sullivan County, in Oct. 2023. That blast was also caused by a propane leak.
