Thank God No One Was Hurt

[Raevengeance]

From my hometown:

http://lacrossetribune.com/articles/2004/0...news/00lead.txt (http://lacrossetribune.com/articles/2004/06/18/breakingnews/00lead.txt)

A gas leak is the apparent cause of an explosion that destroyed a small office building near Fourth and Cameron streets this morning.

Initial reports indicated no one was injured.

The building was the Home Apartments office at 529 Fourth St. Only the metal backbone of the building remained.

Normally, six people work in the building, but none were reported to be on the premises when the explosion occurred.

Smoke billowed into the sky and was visible throughout the downtown area.

Traffic was rerouted around the area.

The explosion, shortly after 8 a.m., "shook the whole place," said Angie Lee, office manager at Flad Ltd., an accounting firm half a block away at 608 S. Fourth St.

She ran outside and saw flames from the exploded building, then said, "We've got to get out of here."

She shut down the office, called family, grabbed some work and left.

Lee said a customer on Thursday noted the smell of gas in the area.

Home Apartments manages residential rental units. The company is owned by Cliff LeCleir.

He said it was a blessing that no one was in the office at the time. "We can always build a building, but we can't replace people," he said.

For more on this story, see Saturday's La Crosse Tribune

[StargateGirl]

Wow! Good thing those 6 people weren't there at the time.

[Raevengeance]

Yeah - I caught the 6 pm newscast - and the owner found the 6 of them nearby - but all safe.

There's a lot of road work down there right now - building a new bridge for east bound traffic while the existing bridge goes west bound only (bridges over the Mississippi River) - so they're doing lots of work to get the streets that are in that area ready for the new "design" since a couple will become one-way in that area - and they found that a metal spike had accidently punctured a gas line going into the building - so that was probably a contributing factor at the least. But there's a car lot across the street - and they have like a "detail" center next to the building that blew up - and several cars had the rubble land on them - so it's "bye bye" to a few cars. and major discounts on others I'm sure since the windows were blown out of them.