Allegheny County

Family living in Plum house that exploded moved in less than two months ago

PLUM, Pa. — Laura Petty shared family pictures with our news partners at the Trib. She, her husband Jake and two of their three little boys, Colin and Dean, were asleep Friday night. 

Their oldest son Bryson was playing video games in the basement of their Plum home. Petty tells the Trib she doesn’t remember hearing or feeling the blast of her home exploding, but woke up with the roof collapsed on her.

“I heard an explosion that literally rocked the house,” neighbor Mike Fisher tells Channel 11.

PHOTOS: Fire crews respond to house explosion in Plum

The family’s garage door was crumpled up and thrown across the street into a neighbor’s yard. The siding was blown apart with the house number lying on the front lawn surrounded by shattered windows and pieces of glass. According to our news partners, Petty says when she first got out of her bedroom, all the doors were hanging off the walls and the whole side of the house was open and collapsed.

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She says if it wasn’t for her husband, Jake, they wouldn’t have made it out alive. Flames swallowed the home and Petty says Jake ran back inside looking for one of the boys who, nobody knew at the time, had climbed out of a basement window.

The family of five moved in less than two months ago. They tell the Trib, they thought this was their forever home. Some neighbors hadn’t even met them yet.

“My introduction was the dad bleeding from his head on the front porch with one of the kids,” Fisher added.

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All five are now out of the hospital, but Bryson, who’s 11, was flown to Mercy’s burn unit for first- and second-degree burns.

Two of the three kids are in the Plum School District. The district says they’re supporting this family in every way that they can.

A spokesperson for Peoples’ Gas says the company tested the lines and found no leaks or any indication of failure in their pipeline. The Allegheny County Fire Marshal is still investigating the cause.