Sept. 04 -- WENTZVILLE, MO -- No one was injured when a home exploded in Wentzville early Tuesday.
The two-story home in the 1900 block of Bonnie Brook Lane was engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived about 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, said Wentzville Fire Protection District's Battalion Chief William Meyer. It took crews about 20 minutes to bring the one-alarm fire under control, he said. Heat from the fire damaged siding on a neighbor's home.
The homeowner was at work when the fire began, and no one else was inside. The cause of the fire is undetermined, Meyer said.
"The house is so far destroyed we can't go inside," Meyer said. "It would hard to even find the cause."
Nearly 20 firefighters fought the blaze. They were from the Wentzville, Lake Saint Louis and Wright City departments.
John M. Schneider, assistant fire chief of the Wentzville Fire Protection District, said two large windows from the home were blown into the street and insulation was found in yards two houses away. "There was debris everywhere," he said. The blast had "tremendous force" to it.
There was a truck in the driveway, and firefighters at first thought there could be someone inside the burning home but it was too dangerous to send firefighters inside the home to look. The homeowner arrived about a half-hour later.
Schneider said the fire marshal's office is investigating, and the gas company was looking at its equipment on the property.
A gas explosion is one theory. "We can't automatically pin it on that, we have to look at other indicators," he said.
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