‘Nothing we could do’: Neighbours describe the moment a Saskatoon home exploded

Lisa Polowski was laying on her couch playing games on her phone early Saturday morning when a sound she’ll never forget rang through the neighbourhood.

“It just sounded like the house was falling down,” she said.

“It was such a loud crash. I got up and went to the dining room and my air conditioner had blown right across my kitchen table.”

Polowski lives right next door to the home that exploded on the 2200 block of Clarence Avenue just before 4 a.m. Saturday.

One person died in the explosion. The body was found roughly three hours later in the basement.

As Polowski tried to make sense of what was going on, she woke her son in the basement and then opened her front door.

“The police were all out there and told us we had to evacuate. The policeman — he looked scared. He said, ‘Go down the street as far as you can,'” Polowski said.

“As we were walking you could hear more explosions. It was scary.”

Saskatoon Fire Chief Morgan Hackl said 29 firefighters and 13 different vehicles were called to the property to extinguish the blaze that quickly spread after the initial explosion.

While firefighters are prepared for anything to happen, no one expected the house to be a pile of scattered insulation and charred lumber.

“Normally we arrive and we won’t see a home levelled like this,” Hackl said.

“The house could be just in its incipient phase, or it could be fully involved, but never like this when it’s fully levelled.”

Saskatoon Fire has turned the body over to the Saskatchewan Coroners Service so the body can be identified.

One man lived at the home, but Hackl wasn’t able to say if he or anyone else was inside the house when it exploded.

Dayna Berry wishes she could have done more.

Berry and her boyfriend fell asleep watching a movie Friday night. They woke up and were on their way to bed when the house lit up and shook the area.

Berry described it as a “train hitting the house.”

“We just saw flames, so ran through our backyard and we jumped the other guy’s fence and it was already engulfed in flames,” Berry said.

“We were yelling out, but there was nothing.”

Berry and her boyfriend stood there helplessly watching the house burn rapidly.

“Maybe two minutes after that there was another huge explosion and the whole house collapsed,” she said.

Hackl said investigators, including SaskEnergy, will determine the location of the initial explosion. He suspects natural gas played a role but wasn’t able to say anything beyond that.

“Everything either blew away from its foundation or ended up in the basement,” Hackl said of the scene Saturday afternoon.

Secondary explosions are often attributed to car tires, propane cylinders and other materials lying around the property, Hackl added.

As Berry continued to shout, reality started to set in when there were no answers.

“The defeat,” she said. “If someone’s there, we’re right here and there’s nothing we could do.”

Neighbours as far as three blocks away told 650 CKOM they could feel the explosion.

Hackl said the gable ends of the house and parts of the roof landed on nearby homes due to the extreme force of the blast.

The front walls ended up on the lawn and the front window jamb flew to the street.

The last time anything like this happened in Saskatoon was in 1988. That’s when Hackl says the department responded to a house explosion along Avenue J North after feeling the hall shake.

Many residents who were evacuated were allowed to return home Saturday, but bordering neighbours like Polowski were forced to wait longer as investigators examined the damage to determine if the homes were livable.