TEXARKANA, AR – A mother, her young child, and firemen are alive tonight to tell the story of a house that not only caught fire, but exploded.
“About halfway through the living room me and my partner heard a boom and then the ceiling fell,” says firefighter Brian Henry.
Texarkana, Arkansas, Fireman Brian Henry was one of two firefighters inside this burning home Wednesday night when unexpectedly, an explosion, cameras were rolling when the explosion blew insulation from the attic of the home all the way into the street.
“Fortunate that the bulk of the pressure went out the attic access,” says Fire Marshal Steve Johnson.
Johnson said this incident is what firefighters call a back draft and is something that doesn’t happen often to trained fire fighters.
“A back draft is caused from some type of combustibles burning in a house and depletes the oxygen inside the structure and because you remove the oxygen they can’t burn so once you introduce the oxygen back to it, it explodes out in a violent rupture,” Johnson says.
The fire marshal says a back draft like this shows the extreme risk firefighters face every time they enter a burning building, both to themselves and others.
“You have to be careful with the public if somebody would had just walked upon this house fire, and the house was all sealed up and kicked in the door, that could actually happen to them. The fire shot out and knock them off the porch and possibly kill them,” Johnson says.
A mother and her 18-month-old child were at home, but made it out before the explosion and were treated for smoke inhalation.
Investigators are calling the fire suspicious, because there was no electric or gas connected to the house. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
“About halfway through the living room me and my partner heard a boom and then the ceiling fell,” says firefighter Brian Henry.
Texarkana, Arkansas, Fireman Brian Henry was one of two firefighters inside this burning home Wednesday night when unexpectedly, an explosion, cameras were rolling when the explosion blew insulation from the attic of the home all the way into the street.
“Fortunate that the bulk of the pressure went out the attic access,” says Fire Marshal Steve Johnson.
Johnson said this incident is what firefighters call a back draft and is something that doesn’t happen often to trained fire fighters.
“A back draft is caused from some type of combustibles burning in a house and depletes the oxygen inside the structure and because you remove the oxygen they can’t burn so once you introduce the oxygen back to it, it explodes out in a violent rupture,” Johnson says.
The fire marshal says a back draft like this shows the extreme risk firefighters face every time they enter a burning building, both to themselves and others.
“You have to be careful with the public if somebody would had just walked upon this house fire, and the house was all sealed up and kicked in the door, that could actually happen to them. The fire shot out and knock them off the porch and possibly kill them,” Johnson says.
A mother and her 18-month-old child were at home, but made it out before the explosion and were treated for smoke inhalation.
Investigators are calling the fire suspicious, because there was no electric or gas connected to the house. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.