Mayor: No One Reported Smell Of Gas Before Elizabeth House Explosion

ELIZABETH, N.J. (CBSNewYork/AP) -- There is no record of anyone alerting the city or utility about the smell of gas one day before a house exploded in New Jersey, officials said Friday.

The blast Wednesday morning at a duplex home on Magnolia Avenue in Elizabeth left one man dead and more than a dozen other people injured. Two other homes also sustained damage.

Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage said there was an obvious breach in a gas line that caused the explosion, but investigators have not yet pinpointed where that was.

PHOTOS: Elizabeth House Explosion

New Jersey Natural Gas and Bollwage said investigators believe a dryer may have been improperly unhooked and the gas line may not have been capped off the right way, WCBS 880's Levon Putney reported.

"And if the gas was off for an extended period of time, and then turned on, it is possible that could have leaked, but there's a lot of other possibilities," Bollwage said.

He said no one called authorities even though the people who lived there said they smelled gas. One tenant described the smell as "overwhelming" the night before the blast, Bollwage said.

There also was an illegal apartment on the ground floor that did not have permits for electricity and gas, Bollwage said. It was getting the utilities from a different unit, CBS2 reported.

The mayor said Elizabethtown Gas was at the duplex earlier this week, and should have noticed hookups for the illegal room conversion and asked about it.

"Whether that occurred or not, the gas company is going to have to answer it," Bollwage said.

As CBS2's Steve Langford reported, the mayor wondered if Elizabethtown Gas failed to go far enough in checking why the apartment the utility was there to hook up already had gas service.

In a statement the utility said, in part, "the technician did what Elizabethtown Gas does in such situations. He checked to confirm that the company's equipment was operating properly and safely. He found that it was."

Still, there are more clues.

Among possible leads, a gas dryer was removed from the first floor apartment in the fall.

Those who survived the explosion said they're traumatized and angry.

"There's so many incidents and so many issues that led up to this happening. Could have been prevented," Kayon pryce said.

Femi Brown, 24, died in the blast. Brown lived on the second floor of the duplex that was leveled "like a pancake" in the blast. There is no word on the cause of death.

In all, 14 people were taken to hospitals. Sixteen people were pulled from the wreckage. Two people, including an 11-year-old, remain in critical condition with severe burns.

The mayor said the Union County Prosecutor's Office is also involved in this investigation.

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