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Firefighter Discusses Home Explosion in California

Aired August 13, 2002 - 14:11   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: A natural gas line left on inside an empty home in southern California is believed to have sparked a massive explosion this morning. The blast leveled the home and severely damaged surrounding houses.
Firefighter Tad Friedman with the Torrance Fire Department joins us on the phone.

Sir, can you tell us what you think happened? That's our summation of the facts.

TAD FRIEDMAN, TORRANCE FIRE DEPARTMENT: Yes. At 5:47 this morning, 30 firefighters from both the Torrance Fire Department and the Redondo Fire Department responded to an explosion and fire at 20194 Tom Lee in Torrance. A significant fact was that the house was tented with a fumigation tent.

One of the things in an incident like this, our number one priority is life. And to us, it's just a miracle that only 10 people were injured in the surrounding homes, and these were minor injuries: just cuts, sprains, bruises, things along those lines.

LIN: That is remarkable, because we're looking at the pictures right now, Pat, and it looks like war zone out there. Was anybody actually inside the house, or these were people who were in the surrounding area?

FRIEDMAN: The home was actually covered by a fumigation tent. That's why the house was vacant at the time. 5:45 in the morning is a very, very vulnerable time for families, obviously, to be in their homes. And it was because people were in their homes in the surrounding area that so few people were injured. And the injuries were so minor.

We really had great cooperation between Torrance and Redondo Fire. Torrance police units assisted in evacuating and searching the surrounding homes.

And again, only 10 injuries -- very minor injuries.

Our neighboring city sustained 36 -- of their homes sustained damage. We have got about 20 homes here in Torrance that were damaged, some very minor, some quite major. We had an adjacent house literally knocked off its foundation by the force of the explosion.

LIN: Wow! Are there going to be criminal charges? FRIEDMAN: That's way too early to speculate. I heard earlier in the report that you guys had reported how the thing actually got started, how the incident got started. We have investigators now working on the cause of this incident. So anything now is purely speculation, and we want to stay away from that. We want to make sure that we nail down precisely how this incident occurred, A, because, obviously, we want to find this out -- B, we want to prevent, as a fire department, anything like this happening in the future, through public education.

LIN: Obviously. Yes, obviously.

Thank you very much, Tad Friedman, with the Torrance Fire Department there. Good work.

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