In the smoky aftermath of a weekend blast that peeled back the second floor of a London townhouse, investigators found the remains of a suspected meth lab, The Free Press has learned.

Fire officials have turned the probe over to London police.

The discovery of an apparent meth lab came after neighbours in the public housing complex saw someone flee the townhouse just before the explosion Friday night that rattled townhouses across a parking lot and caused $500,000 damage.

Fire officials, police and a team from the Ontario fire marshal’s office worked their way through the charred remains on Southdale Rd. E. on Sunday.

Police are leading the probe, “because of some issues we have identified inside,” said Bill Hay, an investigator with the Ontario fire marshal’s office.

Hay wouldn’t say what had been found, but a source says it appears to be the remnants of a lab used to make the street drug methamphetamine, meth, for short.

Police were looking for the fleeing man during the weekend.

“There’s definitely a person of interest seen fleeing from the scene,” Const. Danielle Wright had said.

Police didn’t know his name, but were checking with public housing over the weekend and appealed for anyone who knows him to come forward.

No one was hurt in the blast, but the three townhouses closest to 1217 Southdale also were damaged.

All six units in the complex were vacated Saturday after Union Gas shut off the feed to the units, said Andrea Mackenzie, who heads up social housing for London and Middlesex County.

The Red Cross was helping families find shelter, either through friends and family or motels, she said.

The blast at 8:15 p.m. Friday jolted neighbour John Barnes, who had been on the phone in his townhouse unit diagonally across a parking lot, 35 m away. “It shook the entire unit,” he said of the explosion.

Directly across the lot, the force of the blast was terrifying.

“My heart felt like it stopped,” said Kali Masse.

Masse and Cory Steffler ran outside to find smoke billowing from the peeled-open second floor of the townhouse across from them. Flames soon followed.

“It just went up in flames,” Steffler said.

By the time paramedics, firefighters and police arrived at the unit, no one was inside.

Natural gas wasn’t involved in the blast: Union Gas says it wasn’t called to the scene Friday night.

jonathan.sher@sunmedia.ca