Two children, two adults hospitalized after blast levels their home, firefighters say

Four people, including two children, were hospitalized after an explosion in South Florida leveled the house they were in, damaged several nearby homes and caused debris to land on roofs, front yards and the street early Tuesday morning, according to authorities.

The house blew up around 12:30 a.m. in the 5200 block of Southwest 20th Street in West Park, a few blocks south of Pembroke Road, Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue Battalion Chief Michael Kane told reporters at the scene.

Amid the rubble, firefighters found two adults, including at least one woman, and two children with injuries including burns and broken bones. They were taken to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood; from there, three of them were transported to Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami-Dade County.

First responders reported that multiple residences and cars were damaged by the explosion and people were evacuated from nearby homes.

Although the cause of the explosion is under investigation by the State Fire Marshal, Kane told reporters at the scene that it could be gas-related.

“The home was completely destroyed,” Kane said. “This type of damage is consistent with a gas explosion.”

Kadijah Orr, 24, was sleeping at her boyfriend’s house next door to the leveled home when the explosion happened. Somehow, she slept through the blast, but her boyfriend roused her and rushed her and her 5-year-old daughter out of the house through a broken window that shattered in the explosion.

“I just jumped out of that window and ran down the street because someone said ‘gas,’ and I thought there might be more explosions,” Orr, who had cuts on her legs from the broken glass, told the Herald. “I was leaking blood everywhere.”

The mother of Orr’s boyfriend was sleeping on the couch in the living room, but her son also got her out safely.

“Thank God, she’s OK,” Orr said.

Shere Whitaker, 43, lives in a small one-story apartment building a block west of the explosion. Still, the blast was so powerful that the glass in her windows broke.

“It was just loud, and the glass shattered,” Whitaker said.

When she went outside, she saw Orr and her daughter, and she treated the mother’s cuts with peroxide and bandages.

“I was just trying to help that baby right here,” she said pointing to Orr, “because she was trying to help her baby.”

A woman, who asked to be identified as Miss Harris, told the Herald she thought a car had crashed into a house when she felt the explosion in her house, about five houses west of the site. She rushed to see what was going on outside, but when she grabbed the knob to her front door, it was hot to the touch. The door also wouldn’t open because the shock wave had damaged it.

“You can’t even open the door,” Harris said.

Several hours after the blast, another woman who lived four houses west of the razed home was clearing debris from her front yard. A tarp was taped over where her home’s front door used to be, and she closed her accordion hurricane shutters because the blast broke her windows.

About a mile away, the sound of the explosion was recorded by the doorbell camera of Fernando Antonio’s Parkview at Hillcrest home.

“Looks like something exploded and my entire neighborhood felt the shock (wave),” Fernando Antonio said on X, formerly Twitter. “This was (a) big explosion.”

Another security footage obtained by WPLG Local 10 News shows a fiery mushroom cloud.

A cellphone video obtained by NBC 6 reporter Julia Bagg shows neighbors, minutes after the blast, pointing toward where the house stood.

“Right there, right there!” a man is heard saying.

This article will be updated once more information is available.