At least one person is dead after a home in South St. Paul reportedly caught fire and exploded Thursday morning.
Firefighters were called to a house on Ninth Avenue South near Spruce Street just before 6:20 a.m.
“I heard a big loud boom and it shook my house,” Donna Johnson, who lives nearby, told us.
“Another one went off, I jumped back … then we saw the fires,” her husband, Dave Johnson, added. Other neighbors called 911, including Esperanza Lopez, who described her call to a dispatcher.
“I just saw my neighbor’s house exploded,” Lopez explained. She was like ‘What do you mean, exploded?’ It completely exploded.”
Lopez says her husband tried to get close to the burning home to see if he could help, but the fire was too big.
South Metro Fire Chief Mark Juelfs says after crews extinguished the flames, one person was found dead inside the garage. However, authorities haven’t yet publicly identified that person or even released the victim’s gender or age.