DALLAS (AP) \u2014 An explosion engulfed a Dallas apartment building in a massive blaze Thursday while firefighters were on their way to a reported gas leak, killing a child and least two other people, officials said.<\/p>\n
Dallas Fire-Rescue spokesperson Jason Evans announced the fatalities at an evening news conference. Authorities would not provide an immediate number of how many missing people they were looking for hours after dozens of firefighters had brought the flames under control.<\/p>\n
At least five injured people went to hospitals, according to Dallas-Fire Rescue. <\/p>\n
It was unclear how many residents lived in the two-story building in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas. Some residents\u2019 friends and relatives worried as they tried unsuccessfully to reach each loved ones.<\/p>\n
Dallas Fire-Rescue Deputy Chief Mark Berry said at a news conference that the mission has changed from rescue to recovery. <\/p>\n
Dozens of firefighters searched through the smoldering rubble of the building on the outskirts of downtown Dallas, even as colleagues continued to drench the blackened debris.<\/p>\n
Berry said firefighters were responding to a call of a gas leak when an explosion happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had the cavalry coming,\u201d Berry said. \u201cBut the explosion had already taken place.\u201d <\/p>\n
Atmos Energy, a natural gas provider, said in a statement they were told by fire officials that a construction crew unrelated to the company had damaged a pipeline near the site of the fire. <\/p>\n
Kacee Proctor, a resident of the apartment building, said her mother had smelled gas inside a day earlier, but Proctor didn\u2019t think much of it at the time. <\/p>\n
She wasn\u2019t home during the blast and was devastated that her cat, Shirley, was stuck inside.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been sitting over there crying for several hours. I don\u2019t know what to do. This is all I have right here,\u201d Proctor said, gesturing to the clothes she was wearing.<\/p>\n
She spent the afternoon chatting with neighbors who had evacuated, including a girl who was home babysitting her little sister and carried both the child and their dog to safety. <\/p>\n
Natural gas service to the area remained shut off, and company officials were working with investigators on-site, the company said.<\/p>\n
Authorities set up a family reunification center at a nearby high school. Several hours after the blaze, Frances Rizo was still trying to find her friend who lived in the building.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s not answering her phone,\u201d Rizo said. <\/p>\n
Firefighters rushed to the scene as flames and black smoke billowed into the sky. Some trained their hoses on piles of smoking debris while others removed lumber and other burned wreckage to look for anyone trapped underneath. Little more than a blackened shell of the original building remained.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fire is contained, but our members are still working on the scene to do primary searches,\u201d said Dallas Fire-Rescue Assistant Chief James Russ.<\/p>\n
Julie Jensen said she was at home less than a block from the burning building when she heard a noise like an explosion that left her ears ringing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was sitting on my couch watching TV \u2014 stuff flew off our walls,\u201d Jensen said. <\/p>\n
Jensen said she saw rising smoke and neighbors running when she looked out the window. She grabbed her family\u2019s cat and left, finding a nearby parking lot to wait until she knew it was safe to return.<\/p>\n
Sal De La Rosa was at work at a nearby auto repair shop when \u201call of a sudden we just heard and felt this huge boom.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt where the building kind of shook a little bit,\u201d Del La Rosa said.<\/p>\n
He said a co-worker went outside and saw thick, black smoke rising into the air.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Frances Rizo\u2019s last name in one instance. It is Rizo, not Rizzo.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Associated Press journalists Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, and Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DALLAS (AP) \u2014 An explosion engulfed a Dallas apartment building in a massive blaze Thursday while firefighters were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[17101,112766,102,104,103,3002,112722,490,90551,112724,112723,27,1760,1499],"class_list":["post-313269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-ap-top-news","tag-atmos-energy-corp","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-fires","tag-frances-rizo","tag-general-news","tag-jason-evans","tag-julie-jensen","tag-mark-berry","tag-texas","tag-tx-state-wire","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}