Pottstown's Licensing And Inspections Flags 3 More Properties As Investigators Continue To Search For Cause Of House Explosion
POTTSTOWN, Pa. (CBS) -- Investigators from the Pottstown Licensing and Inspections Department returned to the scene of last Thursday's deadly house explosion on Wednesday. The cause of the blast is still not known.
Officials are trying to determine the full extent of the damage. And residents are wondering if it could have been prevented.
"I heard these loud explosions, the glass blew out," next-door neighbor Tandra Rambert said.
Rambert lived next door to the site of a deadly explosion that leveled a Pottstown home last Thursday night.
"I was on my hands and knees and my son is running and I'm just telling him to get down, get down," Rambert said.
On Wednesday, she returned to her now uninhabitable home still grieving for the five people killed, including four young children.
"I would see them when I drove home playing out there with their mom in the yard," Rambert said.
Officials are still working to determine the full extent of the damage, along with a cause.
"Three additional properties that we are going to have our engineer take a look at," Licensing and Inspections Director Keith Place said.
In a statement, PECO says "we have not found evidence that PECO's natural gas caused this incident," despite calls from residents.
"This has been going on for more than 10 years that this gas smell has been in this area at the corner. They would look, put an 'X' on the street and leave. Nobody dug it up," Rambert said.
Congresswomen Madeleine Dean, who visited the site, is asking everyone to remain patient.
"I don't want anybody to jump to a conclusion that this happened or that happened. And I hope that the investigation can come about as quickly as possible, again, from the notion that we prevent this from ever happening again," Dean said.
Structural engineers will be back on scene Thursday morning to walk through three additional homes that sustained significant damage. The cause of the explosion remains under investigation.
CBS3's Wakisha Bailey contributed to this report.