‘Bright red explosion’ shakes homes, leaves Wilson County neighbors puzzled
WILSON COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — A large explosion has neighbors in Wilson County puzzled. The loud noise shook houses and lit up the sky late Friday night.
“I mean, we always have curious minds, right?” Jon Jong said with a smile.
This incident, however, has neighbors in the rural area of Lovers Lane in Lebanon stumped.
“I was sitting in bed and then I heard this loud explosion. I mean, actually, to be quite honest, I thought someone had hit the front of our house,” Jong explained, adding that it felt like a truck hit his home, but he didn’t see anything outside.
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The next day, his neighbors said they had also felt the explosion.
“She said the same thing, like she thought someone had hit the house and then she went running outside to check on the property and didn’t see anything,” Jong said about another resident.
Jong’s surveillance footage captured a glimpse of the incident beyond the field and tree line at 10:22 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 26.
“That’s when I pulled the video footage and saw the bright red explosion,” Jong recalled, adding that it appeared to be around Spring Creek Road or Carthage Highway.
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He posted the video on social media and found residents on the other side of the highway along Bluebird Road also felt the impact.
Could it be dynamite from a late night construction project?
“Right here off Hartsville, they’re building some new homes, so they’re always blowing up dynamite, which normally, we kind of feel the percussion in the air first and then we’ll kind of feel the ground shake…This one was, it was definitely much bigger because the whole house, I mean, we definitely felt the whole house move and I heard something downstairs rattling, so it was definitely something out of the ordinary,” said Jong.
What about a transformer explosion? Jong doesn’t think so.
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“I used to live next to Camp Pendleton and used to hear mortars going off all the time, and this one was pretty, I mean, it was quite different from anything that I’ve experienced before, so I’m not sure what it was,” he explained. “Someone was like, ‘Maybe there’s some good ole boys back there, shooting some tannerite,’ and I’ve shot plenty of tannerite in the past, and again, this is something, I think it’s something a lot bigger than that.”
News 2 put in calls to the Wilson County Sheriff’s Office, the mayor’s office, county commissioners, and the Wilson County Emergency Management Agency, but we have yet to hear back regarding what exactly caused the explosion.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WKRN News 2.
