Two Injured After Explosion Destroys Mississauga Home
Posted August 28, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It was just before 8am on Monday when it happened – an explosion shook a quiet Mississauga neighbourhood as residents in the Cawthra and QEW area were getting ready to go to work.
As they rushed out their doors to see what happened, they were stunned by the sight that greeted them: the house that once stood at 762 Duchess Ave. was gone, destroyed in a loud blast that damaged nearby dwellings and left nothing but smoking rubble on the lot where the home had stood just minutes before.
Two men were injured, including one who was in the house, and a jogger who was passing by and was hit by the flying debris.
The runner was back home later in the afternoon, while the occupant is expected to recover.
At first it didn’t seem like either would be so lucky.
“We saw this man out the window, like waving a two-by-four trying to tell the fire trucks that he was still in the house,” recalls Kyle McGuigan.
“He was right in front of that house when it blew up,” recounts next door neighbour Grace Garland of the unfortunate jogger. “He was covered in blood from head to toe.”
Residents spent part of their morning trying to figure out what had taken place just a few lawns away.
“All of a sudden everything exploded around me. Glass was flying. Everything was flying,” recalls Garland. “And my husband started screaming from the bedroom what was happening, he was calling me because he didn’t know where I was.”
She claims she and her spouse spent the next few hours plucking bits of glass out of their hair and clothes as firefighters moved in to battle the sudden inferno.
“We’re lucky, because all that flying glass didn’t hit us. I don’t know how we managed to get away from that,” she shakes her head.
“We woke up to like our windows all shattered out,” McGuigan concurs. “Like they were smacking all around, and we heard a lot of banging.”
The area was evacuated for a while as firefighters tried to cool the hotspots, but all but two adjacent neighbours were allowed back once the danger had passed. Their homes were damaged in the detonation and may not be safe to live in.
The signs of the disaster were everywhere – ashes falling like rain throughout the neighbourhood, pieces of the home scattered about, a door blown over onto someone’s front lawn and even a shard of wood impaled in a roof next door.
“We have a number of debris fields as well that we’re protecting,” confirms Peel Police P.C. Craig Platt. “Obviously the Fire Marshal’s Office and detectives will want to have a look at all of the debris.”
All of it will figure into the question everyone’s asking: why did it happen?
Investigators have already determined it wasn’t a natural gas leak, and that explosives weren’t involved. Fire Marshal Bill Hiscott calls it a ‘soft’ event.
“Soft versus hard explosion,” he explains. “Dynamite or something like that. The hard explosion leaves a much different pattern in the building. Whereas as this one has totally destroyed the building.”
There’s been no confirmation of reports the blast may have been the result of a suicide attempt, and the name of the man who was inside the home when it went up hasn’t been released.
In an ironic twist, the house had just been sold and Monday was supposed to be closing day.
To see photos of the blast sent in by CityNews viewers, click on the photo gallery below.
To see unedited video taken by a viewer, click here.
