Explosion rocks downtown Fort Worth
At least 21 people were injured in a gas explosion at an historic hotel in Fort Worth, Texas, leaving streets in the heart of the city littered with debris from the building.
The blast flung doors and entire sections of wall onto the road in front of the 20-storey Sandman Signature Hotel.
First responders rescued several people trapped in the basement, said Craig Trojacek, a spokesman for the Fort Worth Fire Department.
At least one casualty suffered critical injuries and four more had serious injuries. The others taken to hospitals had only minor wounds, according to city officials.
Officials said initial findings pointed to a gas leak and said the hotel’s restaurant had been undergoing construction but no definitive finding had been reached. They have urged the city’s residents to avoid the area.
Three employees of the Musume restaurant in the Sandman hotel were among the injured, the restaurant said on social media.
“All of us at Musume are devastated by the tragic explosion that took place this afternoon at the Sandman Signature Hotel, which is the home of our restaurant,” said Josh Babb, co-founder of Musume.
“Luckily, Musume was closed during the time of the explosion, so we had no customers dining and limited employees working. Three Musume employees were injured, but are being treated in the hospital and in stable condition.”
One eye-witness, Rebecca Martinez, described hearing a loud crack that sounded like thunder before seeing a wall of dust and debris sweep through the city’s streets.
Stepping outside to see what happened, she came upon a man and a woman leaned up against a fire hydrant.
“The man was all bloody, his face was all bloody,” Ms Martinez said. “Then I started smelling natural gas, real intense and I thought, ‘I might need to get away from here.’”
Moments later, she said, authorities evacuated her building and some of the surrounding neighbourhood.
The Sandman Signature Hotel is in a busy part of the city centre, just one block from the Fort Worth Convention Center.
Footage showed firefighters painstakingly picking their way through the remains of the building: piles of drywall, shattered glass and mangled metal that coated the street outside the hotel.
A grey haze covered Fort Worth’s normally busy downtown streets as firefighters worked through the debris and gaping holes on the ground.
“Everything that was in the first couple floors of the building was blown out all over the street,” said Charlie Collier, 31.
Mr Trojacek said local officials were working with federal investigators to determine the cause of the blast.
According to the hotel website, the Sandman Signature Fort Worth Downtown Hotel has 245 rooms and was built in 1920 as the “Waggoner Building,” named after cattle rancher and oilman William Thomas Waggoner. The building has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1979.
