It started with the smell of gas. A crew installing fiber-optic cable on Hiram Lane had hit a buried gas line, and around 3:20 p.m. on Thursday, June 25, someone called 911. Crews got there fast. Then, within about two minutes of their arrival and before anyone could shut the gas off, it ignited. A house blew up. The explosion destroyed three homes in the Twinsburg Township neighborhood and damaged at least 36 more.
The fire didn’t stop at one house. It jumped to the two beside it, and all three were gone. Debris flew across the subdivision and turned up two streets away. Siding, glass, and even a mattress ended up in the trees. One man was reportedly blown out of his chair, got up, and walked outside. A 911 caller told a dispatcher it “sounded like a bomb went off.” Two people went to the hospital with minor injuries, and both have since been released. Nobody was killed.
A couple of lucky breaks kept the toll down. The family in the home where the explosion started was away on vacation, so the place was empty when it went up. Chief Earl Wilson of the Twinsburg Fire Department called it “a miracle in itself,” given how many homes stood in the blast radius. Not everyone walked away unscathed, though. Plenty of residents still can’t go home, and the Red Cross says it’s helping around 11 people.
So what went wrong? The crew was laying a fiber-optic internet line for Uniti Group, the company that owns Windstream. On Friday, Uniti said a subcontractor hit the gas line, and it pointed at a third party: it says a separate utility-locating service marked the underground lines wrong. That hasn’t been confirmed. The Ohio State Fire Marshal’s Office and the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio are both investigating, and they haven’t said yet what set the gas off.
How Close It Came
The gas crew almost didn’t get clear of the explosion. Firefighters had already smelled the gas, called Enbridge, and told residents to shelter in place. The utility crew was right there, barely out of the truck. One Enbridge worker figured they were 30 seconds away from standing in the blast zone when it blew.
What actually lit the gas may never be known. Chief Wilson said it could have been almost anything: a light switch, a sump pump kicking on, any small spark in any of those homes. The gas was already everywhere by then. He pointed out something else, too. The whole neighborhood was covered in utility paint and flags. Those are the markings crews are supposed to dig by, which are usually pretty simple to discern.
What Ohio’s Call-Before-You-Dig Law Requires
This is where Ohio811 comes in. It’s the state’s call-before-you-dig hotline. Under Ohio law, anyone who plans to dig has to file a notice with it first, at least two working days out. That goes for homeowners and contractors both. Crews then have 16 days to start, and the utilities come to mark their buried lines. According to WKYC, Ohio811 couldn’t say whether it was notified about this job. This is something everyone should be keeping in mind with these exact situations, should they occur elsewhere.
For now, a lot of digging has stopped. Twinsburg Township paused all utility work in its rights-of-way until the cause is clear. News 5 Cleveland reported that Hudson, Stow, and Green halted directional drilling too. Investigators still have to sort out whether 811 was called and whether the lines were marked correctly. Those two questions are at the heart of the case. Until they’re answered, the fire department wants everyone off Hiram Lane, where damaged trees and unstable utilities remain.