Alerted by the odor of natural gas, a man helping to remodel a North Chicago home shouted a warning Thursday just as the building exploded in flames, knocking down walls and injuring several workers outside, officials said.
“He came outside just in the nick of time,” said Hubert Geater, owner of an excavation company that was working on the home. “It blew up from the inside.”
The two-story house on the southeast corner of 14th Street and Seymour Avenue was not occupied. Some of the workers were using backhoes and other machinery to dig at the property.
North Chicago Fire Chief Ted Wilder said it will take several days to determine the cause of the midmorning blast, which also damaged an adjacent house.
“The construction workers may have hit a gas line, or a line could have been broken inside the house,” Wilder said. “We’re just not sure yet.”
Three workers were taken to St. Therese Medical Center in Waukegan, officials said.
