Westworth Village police confirmed the incident was a home explosion.
WESTWORTH VILLAGE, Texas — A home explosion rocked a Tarrant County neighborhood Thursday morning, sending one man to the hospital critical condition with burns, officials said.
The explosion happened around 7:30 a.m. in the 5600 block of Watters Place in Westworth Village, west of Fort Worth, near Burton Hill and White Settlement roads.
MedStar, the ambulance service for most of Tarrant County, confirmed they were treating one critical patient at the scene. Westworth Village police confirmed the incident was a home explosion.
The patient who was in critical condition was flown to Parkland Hospital in Dallas.
The Fort Worth Fire Department was also among the agencies responding to the incident.
White Settlement Police Chief Christopher Cook, whose agency was also responding to the explosion, shared several photos from the scene on Twitter, one of which showed a home that appeared to be totally damaged. Wood, shingles and other debris were strewn across the street and property.
Cook tweeted that some homes in the immediate area of the explosion were being evacuated out of precaution.
Fort Worth Fire Battalion Chief James McAmis said the call for the explosion came in at 7:33 a.m. Crews arrived and found that the house had exploded and there was one man who was a victim. The man had burns on his body, and was taken by Careflite to Parkland.
McAmis said the cause of the explosion was still under investigation. Atmos, the natural gas company, was on the scene “assessing the situation,” McAmis said.
“It’s too soon to say that it had anything to do with natural gas,” McAmis said.
Atmos confirmed that its technicians responded to the incident and were “on scene and working closely with emergency responders to verify the area is safe.”
Craig Strain, a nearby neighbor, helped get the victim out of the house after the explosion.
“I saw the house was totally gone,” Strain said. “Not burning, just gone. There was a man standing in the middle of the house, screaming … I worked my way through the gate and started talking to him. Told him, ‘It’s alright man, you’re OK, you’re OK.’ He said, ‘I don’t know.’ I said it’s going to be alright.”
Codi Tanksley, a neighbor near the explosion, described the incident as feeling like “literally an earthquake.”
“It shook everything around us, and I flipped around, and all I saw was one of our neighbors (Strain) running into the house and they were dragging somebody out of the house,” Tanksley said. “A lot of windows busted out. I think the foundation is shifted off of my house. It’s just unbelievable. Everybody is shaken up by this whole incident.”
This is a breaking news story. Check back for more information.
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