For many, Pottstown neighborhood hasn't been same since 2022's unexplained house explosion
POTTSTOWN, Pa. (CBS) -- Friday marked one year since a deadly house explosion in Pottstown. For many neighbors, life there still isn't the same.
"It's been tough," Rebecca Scott said.
"This house was a very special place to us and still is," Stephen Leonetti said, "but it's different now."
Scott and Leonetti are reminded daily about the Pottstown explosion that killed five of their neighbors. The home that burst is next door.
"People don't realize the toll that it takes on you to walk by the place of a life-shattering, life-altering event," Scott said. "I absolutely am terrified that it could happen again."
They were inside their home when the explosion happened.
"We heard the boom," Leonetti said. "Initially thought was a car crash. Then the house started shaking."
And their home took significant damage.
"The beams attaching the first floor to the second floor had actually snapped," Scott said.
Chopper 3 was over the scene of the explosion back on May 26, 2022, after five people, including four children, were killed.
This is what it looks like now, debris still scattered all over the explosion site a year later.
But neighbors say what has changed is they no longer smell a gas odor in the area, which they say would often be in the air before the explosion.
"We smelled it pretty much from the very first time we took our dog for a walk in this neighborhood," Scott said.
Officially, it's still not clear what caused the boom.
In March, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission announced, "The home that was destroyed was not being provided with natural gas service by PECO. No evidence that public utility natural gas service contributed to that deadly event."
But the investigation isn't over.
CBS News Philadelphia tried to speak to the public utility commission this week. It responded via email and referred to a statement from March, which said, "The focus of any further investigation remains on the interior of the residence, but this is outside the scope of the PUC's jurisdiction."
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is investigating, but a spokesperson says it's waiting to receive data from a private lab.
The ATF wrote, "We do not have a timeline for when we will receive this data and have no additional speculation as to the cause of the fire until we review that data."
Meanwhile, those who live in the Pottstown community are getting more frustrated.
"Right now, a year later," Leonetti said, "we have no real concrete facts why a house exploded and people died and a lot of people in our neighborhood were displaced and people were hurt."
"We feel very abandoned by everybody who is supposed to be there for us," Scott said.
Lawyers representing 30 victims filed a lawsuit Thursday over the explosion. The complaint alleges PECO had a role in it.
"There were complaints of gas smells for years leading up to this explosion, including just before the explosion," attorney Jordan Strokovsky said.
CBS News Philadelphia reached out to PECO for its response.
It said, "As a matter of company policy, we cannot discuss the specifics of the lawsuit, but we agree with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission's recent conclusion, which found no evidence that public utility natural gas service contributed to this incident. To date, we also have not found evidence that our facilities caused this incident. Therefore, we believe the lawsuit lacks merit and PECO will be vigorously defending it."
