By Amy Zajac
Correspondent
CALHOUN, Ga. — When Faye Harwell’s cell phone rang Thursday afternoon, a message generated by her home alarm system said her house was on fire.
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Photo by Amy Zajac Emergency vehicles crowd the road leading to the site of a house explosion Thursday in Calhoun, Ga. Fire authorities said no one was inside when a massive blast leveled the three-story home. The cause was unknown.
When she called the alarm service, workers there told her it wasn’t a fire, it was her windows.
She got to her home on Saddlebrook Road Drive to find windows shattered and bricks cracked from the concussion of a blast that leveled a house one street over on Saddle Mountain drive.
Calhoun and Gordon County fire crews sent eight trucks to the blast site, officials said.
A few hours after the explosion and fire, officials said they still didn’t know the cause. No one was home and no injuries were reported, officials said.
No one except emergency workers was allowed into the site until the fire was out, but bystanders could see clouds of smoke rising above trees in the wooded, rolling hills of the neighborhood.
Afterward, neighborhood residents began assessing their own smashed glass and damaged walls.
Fire officials in Calhoun said 80 percent of the upscale homes on the looping residential street were damaged.
Amy Zajac is based in Gordon County, Ga. Contact her at azaja10@yahoo.com
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