Ann Arbor home explosion caused by propane use inside house, says fire chief

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (FOX 2) - An Ann Arbor neighborhood was rocked by a major explosion early Monday morning. The blast leveled an entire house -- but luckily, there were no serious injuries.

Dramatic video from SkyFOX early Monday morning  showed the impact from the house explosion in Ann Arbor

"I got a cup of coffee, went down to the basement to work on my stamp collection and heard the explosion," said Fred Hutchinson, who lives across the street. "The house literally shook, the windows rattled.

"I came to the front yard, looked out the window and you could see the fire inside the house."

It happened on the corner of Princeton and S. 7th Street. Miraculously the man who lived there was able to get out of the house.

"He collapsed on the yard over there and they took him away," said Hutchinson. "So he made it out. I don’t know how he made it but he did."

And he’s expected to recover. Meanwhile the cause of the explosion is not a mystery.

"The gas had been shut off to the house, we were able to confirm that the resident was using propane to heat which we strongly recommend against doing," said Fire Chief Mike Kennedy, Ann Arbor Fire Department. "Unfortunately, this probably could have been prevented. People should not use propane inside a residence for this exact reason.

The blast could be felt and heard by people all over the neighborhood.

"I wandered outside, looked around," said neighbor Steve Bailey. "I didn’t see anything initially. A few minutes later I looked outside, I could see one of the trees torching it was burning straight up, sparks flying in the air and then heard all the sirens heading this way."

Surprisingly— the majority of the destruction was limited to the immediate area.

"The house directly to the south has some burn damage to it and the windows got blown out outside of that no other properties were impacted," Kennedy said.