Blast Would Be Allentown's Second Gas Explosion Within A Year

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

January 5, 2012 | 1:59 PM

As we wait for more news on a possible gas explosion in Allentown, a reminder that a February 2011 blast and fire killed five people in the Lehigh Valley city, and injured more than a dozen.
Here’s the Morning Call’s initial report on the 2011 disaster:

As Thursday dawned, the extent of the explosion and fire in central Allentown became starkly visible: half a block reduced to cinders by a catastrophe that killed five people, displaced scores from their homes and raised fears about the soundness of the aged gas pipelines beneath the city.
The victims of the blast were identified by family members as William Hall, 79, and his wife Beatrice, 74, of 544 N. 13th St.; and three members of the Cruz family at 542 N. 13th St., including a 4-month-old boy.
About a dozen other people were injured and more than 350 were forced to evacuate from surrounding blocks and the Gross Towers seniors apartment complex when an apparent gas leak ignited at the Halls’ home at 10:50 p.m. Wednesday.