THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 17, 1994 TAG: 9406170782
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940617 LENGTH: VIRGINIA BEACH
Two neighbors rushed to the aid of the men who lived inside the single-family home at 1021 Old Dam Neck Road, helping both escape the inferno. Amazingly, one of the occupants walked out unscathed. But Kevin Fitzpatrick, 32, suffered horrible burns.
{REST} Fitzpatrick, who works at the KOA Kampground off General Booth Boulevard, was airlifted by Nightingale helicopter ambulance to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, where he was in critical condition this morning in the Burn Trauma Unit.
The frame house was reduced to smoldering rubble in minutes. The cause of the blast and fire are under investigation.
Nearby residents said they were practically thrown from their beds by the explosion at 12:26 a.m.
The initial blast - followed by at least two smaller explosions - was so powerful that it blew out windows on a brick house next door and melted its rain gutters and an air conditioner. Debris flew hundreds of feet.
``I heard the explosion and just called 911,'' said Larry Schafer, 31, an aircraft mechanic at the Naval Aviation Depot. ``It was nothing like I've ever heard before. It shook everything in the house.''
Another neighbor, Randy Hardin, 29, said the noise was so loud, he thought it had come from his own yard.
They tried to force the front door open, but the explosion had shifted the entire structure. The doorframe was warped so badly that the door was blocked by the floorboards inside.
``I was charging into it with my shoulder,'' Schafer said. ``But it was so twisted, it wouldn't budge. Fortunately, Charlie,'' the other man in the house, ``was alert enough to take (Fitzpatrick) to the back door.''
Fitzpatrick was talking, Schafer said, but it was a mumble. ``I don't know what he was saying.''
Charles Gravatt, 31, a Navy man who lives nearby and was among the scores of residents roused by the blast, rushed to offer medical aid.
Fire Department spokesman Chase Sergeant said authorities would not speculate on a cause for the blast until their investigation was complete - neighbors said there were propane gas tanks in the house.
Whatever the cause, however, Sergeant said there was no doubt that the explosion was powerful. Walking around the still smoldering debris early today, he used his flashlight to point out evidence of the explosion's intensity.
``You see that,'' Sergeant said, shining the beam on what appeared to be a perfectly flat porch extending from the front of the house. ``That's the front wall.''
Where the front wall appeared to have simply blown over, a side wall had taken a more dramatic flight. It lay flat on the ground, its base a full six feet from the foundation of the house. Smoke curled skyward from parts of it.
Next door, the front yard was littered with debris, including pieces of wall and roofing that sheered off leaves and small limbs as they flew into trees. A large chunk of debris had landed on the roof. Two side bedroom windows of the duplex were blown inward, all the glass shattered.
Karen Seachrist, 41, was asleep in one of those bedrooms when the blast hit.
``I don't know if it jerked me out of that bed or if I flew out of that bed,'' she said as she looked over the damage. ``That was the god-awfulest noise I ever heard.'' She thought a car had rammed her home.
Despite the damage, Seachrist counted herself lucky. Her 18-year-old son Bobby was out when the blast hit. And only days earlier, she had rearranged her bedroom, moving a bureau with a tall mirror up against the side window.
When she pulled that bureau aside this morning, she found shards of glass that might otherwise have showered her while she lay in bed.
``Oh, my God. Oh, my God,'' she repeated.
{KEYWORDS} EXPLOSION BURN
by CNB