Three taken to hospital and homes evacuated after ‘gas explosion’ near Bristol

Three people have been taken to hospital after reports of a gas explosion which destroyed a house near Bristol.

The house in Yate was burnt almost completely to the ground during the blaze, which followed the explosion on Tuesday morning.

Around 40 people have been evacuated from the area, with a refuge centre set up nearby to the incident on Lancaster Road, Avon and Somerset Police said.

Around a dozen neighbours came to help rescue people trapped in two homes after the explosion.

Charlie Daines, 48, whose home is around 50 metres from the incident, said she had just let the cats out into the garden when she saw the explosion.

“I was stood out there and watched it happen,” she said.

“It was silent outside, I was just standing there and then this almighty bang. The explosion rocked through my body, shook the houses and all this debris went flying up into the air.

“My husband came running out of the house and said ‘what was that?’

“It was like a bomb had gone off.”

When they arrived, she said an older couple were being helped from the house that exploded.

She said people were trying to smash a window at a house next door, which caught alight, where a lady who was infirm needed help.

Two people were in the house which was on fire, with one dropping their keys in the panic.

“She got the door unlocked and two guys carried the lady with a bad back,” Ms Daines said.

“She had obviously been in a bedroom where something had collapsed on her because she had cuts.”

They managed to get the injured woman across the road onto the lawn, with three other injured people, where they helped wrap them up.

“It felt like it took forever for the fire brigade to come but it can’t have been more than a few minutes. We just sorted people out until the fire brigade and ambulance were there.”

One of the people saved from the house explosion was worried she had lost her dog in the incident.

Ms Daines said: “The lady whose house exploded, she was just saying, ‘my dog, my dog’, over and over again.

“And she was saying, ‘that’s my house, that’s everything, that’s my home’.

“I just felt so sorry for them, because they were shaking so badly.”

One of the men injured in the incident was in such shock, Ms Daines said, they could not get him to say anything.

The three people taken to hospital are not believed to have suffered life-threatening injuries.

A fourth person was treated by ambulance services at the scene, according to Avon fire services.

“We were called at 6.53am to reports of a gas explosion in a residential home on Lancaster Road, Yate this morning,” Avon Fire and Rescue Service said.

“The explosion caused a fire, which has now been safely extinguished. A cordon has been put in place.

“Local people are asked to avoid the area while we deal with the incident.”