A car violently exploded in the morning outside of a home in Totowa, New Jersey, jolting a neighborhood awake on Monday.
“We heard an explosion around 5:30 in the morning it was very loud, it sounded like a giant boom, so that’s the first thing to say. And we got up and we looked out the window and we saw the remains of a car. And the car exploded, no fire, just a concussive blast,” Totowa resident Sheldon Blaine told ABC 7 News. “Our house, our windows was facing the explosion, they are all blown in. There are pieces of the car inside of the house.”
According to acting Totowa Police Chief Brian Mulroony, a 28-year-old man got into his black Audi at around 5:30 a.m. in front of his home in the Hickory Hill development and was about to drive to work. Unfortunately, when he started his car, it blew up.
Thankfully, somehow, the man got out of the car on his own and was able to walk away alert and coherent. An ambulance took him to the hospital for a checkup. Totowa Mayor John Coiro told USA Today, “It appears that he has some bleeding in his ears, but not much else. He is lucky.”
The explosion damaged at least one home in the neighborhood
The explosion destroyed windows and threw cabinets off walls, and pieces of the car landed up on people’s lawns and crashed through their homes’ windows. It also blasted a portion of a nearby fence right out of the ground. Potential structural damage to Blaine’s home will require an inspection by the buildings department.
“When we looked out of the window, we saw, well, what was left of the car. His wife came out and said her husband was in the car and was able to make it out,” Blaine told News 12.
“It blew in our house. Stuff off our doors, our windows were all blown in,” he added.
Mulroony said a preliminary investigation involving the ATF, the FBI, and members of the Passaic County Sheriff’s bomb squad determined that a leaking acetylene cylinder in the trunk of a vehicle caused the explosion. ABC 7 News reported that the man is a welder (another report said he is a plumber), which is why the acetylene cylinder was in his car, and investigators said there was no evidence of foul play.
“The house shook. It was an explosion. The house shook and we’re two and a half, three blocks away from that,” neighbor Pete Rizzuto told News 12.