One person is still missing and four people have been rescued after a house collapsed following a fire and explosion in Croydon, south London.
Six fire engines and around 40 firefighters were sent to the blaze in Galpin’s Road, Thornton Heath, just after 7am on Monday.
London Fire Brigade Assistant Deputy Commissioner Richard Welch told Sky News that four people had been rescued and that firefighters were still looking for a “missing person”.
Kukanda Kutoya, 50, and Delroy Simms, 62, who live nearby, said they helped rescue three children from the rubble but feared a girl was still trapped inside.
Four people were treated by paramedics at the scene, three of whom were taken to hospital.
Kutoya told Sky News correspondent Madeline Ratcliffe at the scene that he was sleeping when he heard what sounded like “a bomb”.
He opened the window to find a cloud of “smoke” and heard “people screaming,” so he ran outside in his shorts and saw the house collapsed.
“People inside the house were screaming,” he said.
He said children inside the house were “screaming and crying” and a woman was “shaking”.
“The woman was crying and saying ‘one of my daughters is five years old and she’s still there’, and then we couldn’t find her because there were bricks and wood everywhere.”
Forty properties were evacuated and dozens of residents gathered in front of a 50-meter police cordon in pajamas.
Some said they had reported a strong smell of gas two weeks ago, and others said they had felt dizzy and sick for the past two days.
A local resident told Sky News he heard a loud boom from several streets away that sounded like “a storm” coming through the house and opened the doors.
Others said they were woken up by the noise. A man who lives down the road said the windows and doors of his son’s room were shaking after the explosion.
The London Fire Brigade said it had received 14 calls about the incident and that neighboring properties had also suffered damage.
The cause of the fire and explosion is not yet known, he added.
A London Ambulance Service spokesman said: “We treated four patients at an incident in Galpins Road, Thornton Heath. One was released at the scene and three others were taken to hospital.
“We remain on the scene with our emergency service colleagues.”
Metropolitan Police officers are also at the scene.