Four firefighters were injured Thursday night when a house exploded on the 17000 block of Lamont Street in Detroit.
The firefighters, from Engine Co. 56 on Ryan Road, were taken to Detroit Receiving Hospital with minor burns and cuts and are expected to be OK, Executive Fire Commissioner Donald Austin told the Free Press.
He said firefighters were extinguishing a fire at what was believed to be a vacant house when the explosion occurred around 9 p.m., possibly due to a natural gas leak.
The home is in a neighborhood, near Mound and E. McNichols, where numerous fires broke out in houses at three locations, straining the department, which suffered cutbacks in July because of the city budget crisis.
Thursday night, multiple fires broke out in the neighborhood around Chene and Gratiot, northeast of Eastern Market. Rigs responded from distant parts of the city, leaving large swaths of the city unprotected.
