A gas explosion that partially collapsed a North Carolina building and set it ablaze Wednesday morning killed one person and injured more than a dozen others, police said.
Police cars blocked the streets near the explosion in downtown Durham and a thick, acrid smoke hung over the shopping district created from remodelled tobacco warehouses.
At least two ladder trucks sprayed blasts of water into the smoldering rubble nearly two hours after the explosion.
Durham Police Department spokesman Wil Glenn said a contractor boring under a sidewalk hit a 2-inch gas line, triggering the explosion.
One person was killed and 15 people were taken to area hospitals, Glenn said at a news conference.
One firefighter was seriously injured, he said.
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Jim Rogalski, a Duke University employee who works in an office directly across the street, told the News & Observer that roughly 100 people in the office watched as the explosion blew windows off the side of their building.
"People were sitting at their desks and ceiling tiles were falling," he told the newspaper.
"Stuff flew off shelves. You could barely see for 25 feet from all the dust. People were screaming."
"I was in the hallway so I didn't so much feel it shake as experiencing a jarring sound."
"I was in the kitchen. I heard this loud boom and the building shook. When I looked out, I saw the smoke billowing up. I was scared for whoever was in the vicinity because it did not look very good."
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