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Light Rain House explodes in Elmont
A house at 150 Lincoln St. in Elmont exploded into flames at approximately 1:30 a.m. on Sept. 6, causing the home to fully collapse.
Mike Capoziello, chief of the Elmont Fire Department, said the fire was caused by a gas leak, but the cause of the leak is unknown at this time.
At approximately 1:37 a.m., Capoziello said, the Elmont Fire Department was alerted by a local resident about the explosion, and the department arrived two minutes later. Ambulances from both the Elmont Fire Department and Nassau County Police also responded.
Mutual aid units came from Valley Stream, Franklin Square, Floral Park, Malverne, West Hempstead, Lawrence, Cedarhurst and Stewart Manor, and the fire was put out around 2 a.m.
Three firemen sustained minor injuries while fighting the fire, and were treated and released last week. No other injuries were reported. There were no individuals in the home at the time of the fire — the owner of the home was in the hospital, for an unrelated cause, at the time the fire occurred — and the 12 occupants of the two homes on each side of the house, at 154 and 146 Lincoln St., were able to get out safely.
Capoziello said that the two homes that were facing the fire also caught on fire. "When units arrived, we concentrated on the other houses first, then put out the fire of the home that exploded," Capoziello said. "The fire did not go out quickly as it was fed by a ruptured gas line from the explosion. Efforts were hampered by the flow of gas in the basement. Members from the Department shut the gas off at the curb, and then we were able to put the bulk of the fire out rather quickly.”
On Sept. 9, while officials from the Nassau County Fire Marshal’s Office and Town of Hempstead Building Department were working together to lift debris from the explosion with a crane and load it into a truck trailer, as well as fill the hole in the ground created by the explosion with dirt, the truck was flipped on its side. The driver — a contractor working for the town — was transported to Winthrop Hospital in Mineola by a Nassau County police ambulance for minor injury.
