Prospect, Ore. — Police and fire investigators are working around the clock, after an explosion and fire completely leveled a Prospect home this past weekend. Neighbors are speaking out, saying the blast had much more force behind it than a propane tank could cause.
“Occasionally you’ll hear a gunshot go off or people, light firecrackers for something, but this was something different,” Charles Berg said.
Berg tells me he’s a retired firefighter with the Fresno Fire Department, and former arson investigator. He lives less than a mile away from the house on the 200-block of Flounce Rock road, where an explosion happened Saturday night.
“I describe it not just as an explosion, but a detonation,” Berg said.
Another neighbor NBC5 News spoke with Saturday night, Matthew Vineyard, made a similar statement.
“It looked like the house had C-4 underneath it, and it went off,” Vineyard said.
Both men heard the blast, called 9-1-1, and then ran up to the house.
“We pushed through the gate and went up, and the first thing we saw was the garage had completely disintegrated, and there was debris everywhere as we went up, there was beams, and still after all this time, there was still pieces of insulation falling from the sky,” Berg said.
After searching the area for people, they backed away, and waited for fire crews, who arrived a short time later.
According to law enforcement officials, propane suppliers examined the tank on Monday, and found it was not part of the explosion. To Berg, that adds up.
“Every propane tank fire or petroleum fire I’ve been on, when they blow up, there’s a lot of energy, but not a pressure wave like that.”
In interviews, the homeowners have alleged that someone may have done this on purpose with malicious intent.
“From listening to the news, and them saying the interviewed the gentleman that lived there, he’s claiming that that is what occurred,” Berg said. “I would naturally think that if I was storing anything like high explosives, C-4, that kind of thing, that would probably be my story too.”
Berg tells me he doesn’t know the homeowners, but says he is in communication with other neighbors, who haven’t reported anything suspicious lately.
“It’s a very big surprise to me that, people living in a house like that, it seemed like a very nice house to me, I think they have a pool, private gated thing, that somebody would want to do something to them that violent, kind of a thing, I mean it was just so much overkill,” Berg said.
The information given by witnesses has not been confirmed by police. Officers are continuing their investigation and are not openly speaking about the case at this time. If you have any information, call Oregon State Police at (541) 776-6236.
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