Tarrant County

Painter Injured in Tarrant County Explosion Expected to Recover

The man was injured when a home exploded in an unincorporated section of Tarrant County Saturday night

A worker who was burned when the house he was painting exploded on Saturday was flown to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries, according to the Tarrant County Fire Marshal's Office.

No one was living in the 6,000 square foot house while it was undergoing renovation. The house is in the 8000 block of Bella Flora Drive near Benbrook, in an unincorporated section of Tarrant County.

The explosion happened around 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

Steve Moore heard the blast from his home next door.

"I thought it was a big lightning strike and my wife goes that was no lightning strike," Moore said.

Moore said he and other neighbors rushed outside and called for help.

"The garage doors are completely blown out and all the windows are blown out. One of the guy's workers was coming out, he was on fire, his T-shirt was on fire," Moore said.

Moore said the fire damaged some roof shingles and blew out windows at his home next door, but the fire did not spread to any other homes in the neighborhood.

The fire marshal's office said paint fumes and another ignition sources likely sparked the blast.

"You get the right air, fuel mix and it finds an ignition source and it lights off," Tarrant County Deputy Fire Marshal Mike Rehfeld said. "People do this kind of work every day without any problems. Today was just was one of those days where it found an ignition source."

Firefighters were back on the scene Sunday with tanker trucks, putting out flames that continued to smolder under the pile of debris.

The home is located in an unincorporated part of the county with no city water or fire hydrants.

"All the fire companies know they have to bring tankers with them and they know what their trucks have on them, so they're all doing the math real quick to figure out how fast we need to get more water out here," HOA President Chuck Peterson said.

There is no natural gas to the homes, but many have buried propane tanks. Peterson said a quick-thinking neighbor ran to a shutoff value to turn off propane to the burning home Saturday.

"This was a pretty hot fire and it went up pretty fast but the response was impressive," he said.

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