Explosion levels house, injures three elderly siblings

UPDATE 8/8/22 @ 6:20 p.m.

PIKE COUNTY, Ky. (WSAZ) - Family members of three elderly people injured in a house explosion Monday morning are praying they pull through.

Investigators say it happened on Lick Fork Road in the Dorton area of Pike County.

Neighbors say a little after 9:30 a.m. they heard a loud boom that shook their own homes. They came out and saw the house had been obliterated.

The man who lives next door, Dwaine Wright, was not home at the time but says his 80-year-old uncle lived in the house alone. Wright says his mother and aunt were at his uncle’s house helping him at the time of the explosion.

Pike County Emergency Management says two of those injured were flown from the scene to Cabell Huntington Hospital, and the third was taken in an ambulance to Pikeville Medical Center and later flown to a hospital in Louisville.

KSP and the fire marshal are investigating. There’s no word yet on what caused the explosion.

Wright says he rushed home from work after getting a phone call about what happened. He says he was able to speak briefly with his 80-year-old mother before she was flown away.

“She was coherent, but I could tell she was in pretty bad shape,” Wright said. “She was burnt and swelling.”

He says considering how severely the house was levelled, it’s stunning anyone survived.

“I don’t see how they’re alive, any of them,” he said. “I really don’t. How can you live through an explosion while you’re indoors?”

He says the house has been in the family since at least the 1940s.

ORIGINAL STORY

PIKE COUNTY, Ky (WSAZ) - Three people were injured Monday morning after an explosion leveled a home, emergency management confirms.

According to dispatchers, the call came in from Dorton, Kentucky.

U.S. 23 was temporarily shut down to be used as a landing zone to lift people out of the area.

Emergency management reports two people were flown from the scene and one person was transported to the hospital by ambulance.

Two women and a man were injured Monday. Emergency management says all three were related.

U.S. 23 has since reopened.

The Fire Marshal’s Office is investigating along with Kentucky State Police.

Further information has not been released at this time.

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