MADRID (AP) – A powerful gas explosion tore through a residential building in central Madrid on Wednesday, killing at least three people and tearing off the facade of the structure.
A smoke tower rose from the building, where repairs were done to a gas cooker, and bowled through Toledo Street near the city center. Airstrikes shared by Spanish national police covered rubble covering a nearby schoolyard, though the mayor of Madrid said no one was seriously injured at the school.
At least eight people were injured in the blast, one seriously, the Madrid emergency services said in a tweet. And a technician who worked on the boiler is missing, according to the Spanish government’s representative for the Madrid region, José Manuel Franco, who confirmed the three dead.
A police spokesman on the ground told reporters firefighters tried to put out a small fire in the damaged building before they could bring in search dogs and special rescue teams to search for possible survivors.
An Associated Press reporter saw emergency workers carrying two bodies away from the area, one covered by firefighters in a blue blanket and another in a reflective emergency sheet.
The building was part of the nearby La Paloma Catholic Congregation and provided the offices and apartments for some of its priests, Archbishop Carlos Osoro told Spanish public broadcaster TVE in Madrid.
Emy Lee Grau, a resident of the area who was watching television in a building across the street, said the moment of the explosion was ‘frightening’.
“Everything was shaking, it felt like the roof was falling on us. “We were terrified when we saw the amount of smoke coming out of the church building,” the 20-year-old resident of Madrid told The Associated Press.
The Mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida, evacuated a nearby nursing home and no injuries were initially reported among the residents. The 55 residents of the home were initially taken to a hotel across the street and later sent to other nursing homes, officials said.
Martínez Almeida also said that minor damage was identified in a nearby school, where he said people did not suffer more than ‘scratches’.
Resident Leire Reparaz said she heard the explosion and was not immediately sure where it was coming from.
“We all thought it came from school. “We went up the stairs to the top of our building and we could see the structure of the building and a lot of gray smoke,” said the 24-year-old.
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Associated Press photographer Paul White contributed to this report.