Morning Call: Today's Allentown Gas Blast Contained To One Home; Injures 2

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 | 3:12 PM

This afternoon’s gas explosion in Allentown was nowhere near the scope of last year’s tragedy, which killed 5 people. According to the Morning Call, the blast was contained to a single home:

Two workers suffered moderate injuries Thursday afternoon from a gas explosion at 213 N. Fulton St. and two residents of the house were taken to the hospital as a precaution, Allentown officials said.
Fire Assistant Chief Lee Laubach said the explosion was contained to that home, where the front porch caved in after the blast. He said a crew had been working on the gas meter of the house.
The explosion in the street of rowhomes just west of 15^t^h Street was reported shortly after 1 p.m. The workers and the residents of the two apartments at 213 were taken by ambulance to Lehigh Valley Hospital. Their names and conditions were not immediately available.

StateImpact has reached out to the Allentown Fire Department, and will provide an update if we learn any more information.