May 26--FORT WORTH -- A woman and her three dogs escaped serious injury Sunday morning when her house exploded after she noticed a "odd smell" in the structure, a fire official said.
Paige Pauley's dog, Cassidy, was singed in the explosion. But the other two dogs, Buster and Oliver, were not hurt, said Battalion Chief Richard Harrison on Sunday.
The cause of the explosion was still under investigation, Harrison said.
Firefighters responded to the scene shortly after 9:30 a.m. Sunday in the 6400 block of Garland Avenue in west Fort Worth.
Pauley said first noticed an odd smell late Saturday.
"I thought my sewer line had popped," Pauley said Sunday afternoon in a telephone interview. "It smelled like sewer gas so I just moved to the other end of the house."
Pauley said the smell wasn't bad on Sunday morning.
"I still called my plumber," she said. "And I was telling myself not to flush or not to do anything with hot water.
But Pauley was standing over her sink when she decided to turn on the hot water.
"Then came the explosion," Pauley said. "It knocked me back, but it didn't knock me down."
The explosion singed Cassidy who was in a hallway, but Buster and Oliver were not injured because they were in the kitchen with Pauley.
"There was a lot of smoke," Pauley said. "I grabbed the phone and called 911. I also grabbed the dogs."
At that point, a neighbor with smoke throughout the house came running in, yelling for Pauley.
"I told her I was fine and we then just got out of the house," Pauley said.
The explosion knocked out any fires in the house, Harrison said.
From the outside, there appears to be little or no damage.
But the impact knocked out several inside walls and caused heavy damage to the interior of the house, Pauley and fire officials said. Estimate damages were not available Sunday.
Domingo Ramirez Jr., 817-390-7763 Twitter: @mingoramirezjr
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