Firefighters, Carabineros and personnel from the Emergency Medical Assistance Service (Samu) work in the Cerro 18 sector in the Lo Barnechea commune, Santiago de Chile Metropolitan Region, due to a strong explosion reported by neighbors on the morning of this Thursday.
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According to information provided by the police, It exploded from an incident due to gas emanation, which has left three homes affected, nine people injured -among them a minor and one in serious condition at the El Salvador Hospital- and a person trapped in the rubble of the place, who has already been rescued.
Of course, volunteers from the Fire Department rescued the woman who was found trapped. After the emergency, The affected woman was left under a heavy concrete slab of her home and the Firefighters volunteers had difficulties to communicate with her, amid the anguish of the family.
Thus, the woman was transferred to a care facility with serious injuries. In addition, her home was at risk of collapse, so specialized firefighters work on her safety.
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Firefighters work at the scene and specialized personnel from the Carabineros have come to clear the sector and allow work. In this sense, traffic was restricted on Los Quincheris street between El León and the Cerro 18 elevator sector.
«We are going to clear the entire sector of the neighbors so that the firefighters can review the entire sector to rule out that there may be gas emanation in any other home,» said Colonel Alison Larrañaga.
the fire brigades carry out the evaluations of the damages as a result of this emergency. And, according to preliminary information, there would be two houses destroyed, while another two with medium damage.
Neighbors spoke to the media. The father of the injured minor said that «I heard an explosion and I turned around to protect my wife and my son by my side. But it was in a second, I thought that a plane had fallen on top of the houses and I discovered the phone and now everything was destroyed (…) I thought I had died immediately». His 17-year-old son was transferred to the Guillermo Javier Cornejo polyclinic.
Another neighbor recounted with grief that «I was with my husband when we felt that and we didn’t know (…) and when we heard the noise we covered ourselves, we didn’t know we were terrified.»
Denisse Madrid, director of Community Development of the community entity, told the media that «we have 10 injured, who are each being treated in the different places and health spaces that we have in the community.»
«There are five more seriously affected homes and we are doing the cadastre of the rest of the homes that, surely, have had less collateral damage,» he added, adding that a shelter is available.
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