4 dead, at least 3 hospitalized after home explosion in Plum



Allegheny County authorities tell KDKA four people are now dead, with one still unaccounted for, after a house explosion in Plum. KDKA’s Lauren Linder shares the latest information from Plum.

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44 thoughts on “4 dead, at least 3 hospitalized after home explosion in Plum”

  1. Search and rescue efforts were called off "due to the weather", but we have a reporter in a sleeveless outfit enjoying a comfortable night for reporting outside. I'm sure that Pittsburgh has many heroic first responders, but I'm wondering if some of them aren't cowards.

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  2. I would put money on murder-suicide to get enough volume of gas in our house that's size would take a long time and gives most people warning enough to evacuate if they could so if I had to guess that's what I would say happened

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  3. That was a cook house. Seen this before! They explode like professional explosions teams made it happen. Whomever was cooking is not longer breathing. Sure hope innocent people weren’t harmed

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  4. I was 6 years old in 1963. My mother had just been hired as a teacher and we moved into a house owned by the school. The previous tenant (Coach Ross) had taken his gas fired clothes dryer with him when he moved. They turned off the utilities and he disconnected it. Then instead of capping the pipe he used his foot to shove the pipe down to below the floorboard and did not operate the check valve. Then the painters came in and painted the house. They turned the utilities on the next day and we showed up early evening after the movers had brought our stuff inside. It smelled funny to me but my mother thought it was the paint. She lit a match to find the light switch and the house exploded.
    I was thrown 20 feet backwards down a hall. There were fire rings of burning gas everywhere. I opened a door thinking it was a way out but it was the bathroom and there was a giant whoosh as the gas found the oxygen there. I ran back up the hall into the living room. Fire was all around and I was getting burned. I saw a large black rectangle/hole where there was no fire and ran and dove through that. I broke my arm when I hit the ground but I wasn't on fire anymore. My mother and older brother had also escaped but I was much more badly burned than them (I spent the next 4 months in a hospital). The explosion was clearly heard 5 miles away.
    My point is that we were in the center of a giant explosion and weren't killed. We had a fuel/air mix explosion. This explosion looked to me like a much higher order of energy…like the stuff we were trained to use at Ft Leonard Wood in Missouri.

    It sure looked like HE to me. I think meth labs are also fuel/air detonations. The difference is that an explosive like TNT contains its own oxidizer and does not require ambient oxygen from the surrounding environment to combust. Therefore even though the energy released is roughly the same the high explosive reaction happens about 1000 times faster meaning that all that energy is released in about 25 milliseconds. I'm not a chemist but I did go to combat engineer school in the early 80s…clean DD214 if anyone's wondering.
    So I do know a thing or 2 about explosions and would welcome any qualified observations.

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  5. Man there is absolutely nothing left of that house that exploded. That was one hell of a explosion. This has to be from a gas leak. It's also very sad that 2 other house caught fire and are a total loss. R.I.P. to people that passed away.

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  6. But gas saves like 500 bucks a year. Gas itself can asphyxiate you, carbon monoxide produced can kill. I guess a leak fills a house n a spark dies the rest. Builders or owners will try to justify it.

    Running a ac , heater, or appliance off well grounded electricity is smarter

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  7. What a stupid report. There is no explanation whatsoever about what really happened. Houses do not just explode. What exectly is a "house explosion"? Gas leak? Aliens? Magic? Chinese neighborhood police? Do maga republicans blame Hunter Biden for this? What?

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  8. If it was a gas leak the other houses would go up too.prayers to the families. I get scared I live in center township where they are putting a gas line in front of the houses

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