explosion firegeezer on 09 Aug 2008 03:38 pm
Practice Makes Perfect
Poor Eric Walter, 37, of Knoxville, Ohio, just west of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Five times in the last twelve years his house has had two fires and three explosions.
The blast that rocked the area for a mile around this past Thursday night completely destroyed his home….again. This time he was left with 2nd and 3rd-degree burns over 75% of his body. Walter is currently in the burn unit of West Penn Hospital of Pittsburgh in critical, but stable condition.
His strip of bad luck began in 1996 when his house burned down. It was determined to be an arson, but Walter was never a suspect of the crime.
The first time his house blew up was in 2001. After Walter rebuilt his home in that time, it blew up again in November, 2003. This time the blast was so severe that it blew the neighbor’s house off of its foundation. The neighbor, Steve Myers refused to rebuild his house in the same spot after that one. “After our last house was destroyed, you come to a point where you don’t want to live across from someone like that,” he said. “This guy has to be an extremely unlucky individual. Let’s put it that way. It’s time someone takes a hard look at what’s going on here. Someone is going to get hurt.”
They didn’t have to wait long, as it turned out. In April, 2006, the house burned down again. Never one to give up, Walter rebuilt for the fourth time, only to see it all turn to splinters again on Thursday. This time the entire house was scattered in pieces all over the neighborhood. Another neighbor, Jim Shaffer said: “We were watching TV and it shook the whole house. I said to my wife, ‘That sounded like when Walter’s house burned down the first time.’”
This time 23 fire trucks were on the scene all night with the blaze, hampered by the lack of a hydrant and having to set up a tanker shuttle. They were held back aways, too, because of a continuing stream of at least 10 smaller explosions coming from propane cannisters and ammunition caches.
Poor Eric Walter.
WTOV-TV has the story and three videos HERE.
