By Alex Zdan and Alyssa Mease

EWING — A massive, gas-fueled explosion today killed one woman, injured seven utility workers and destroyed or damaged 55 homes, officials said.

Authorities said contractors working in the Mountain View neighborhood smelled gas late this morning and notified PSE&G. Less than an hour after PSE&G workers arrived to investigate, the blast occurred — leveling homes and sparking a more than two-hour fire.

The body of the woman, believed to have lived in the neighborhood, was recovered late in the afternoon on the hood of a car parked amid the damaged condos at Crockett Lane, police said. Police withheld the woman’s name pending notification of kin. No other complex residents were hurt.

For worried residents who heard a blast that carried throughout Ewing and at least into Hopewell Township, there was initial uncertainty over what could have caused the tremendous eruption of sound, which was accompanied by a fireball.

“We didn’t know if it was an air crash or something,” said John Sass, who lives in a neighborhood of single family homes adjacent to the South Fork at Ewing complex. “We saw the huge flames and you could see it billowing out.”

Some of the homes were beyond repair. “The last count was 10 that are actually gone,” Ewing Police Lt. Ron Lunetta said tonight.

The cause of the explosion remained under investigation, but officials said an electrical contractor digging in the area may have struck an underground, 2-inch gas main or a smaller service line.

PSE&G had contracted with Long Island City, NY-based Henkels & McCoy to correct an electrical problem in the home closest to the explosion, director of gas construction Mike Gaffney said.

Those workers caused damage to PSE&G lines in the vicinity. “Either the service line or the main to the area was cut,” Gaffney said.

Gas began to flood the inside of the home. When the Henkels & McCoy workers first smelled gas, at around 11:45 a.m, they immediately called PSE&G.

Lunetta said PSE&G workers arrived shortly afterward, at 11:58 a.m., and found that the Henkels & McCoy employees had retreated to a safe distance. The PSE&G employees were working on the problem for around 50 minutes before the explosion emanated from a unit at 28 Crockett Lane.

The explosion occurred at 12:51 p.m. and destroyed the condo unit, Lunetta said. Five PSE&G employees and two workers from Henkels & McCoy were injured, Lunetta said.

“There were several employees in front of the dwelling,” Gaffney said this evening. “We have, I think it is right now, seven employees in the hospital, two with injuries and five there for observation.”

The toll of injuries could have been far higher during hours where children and families are home, said Lunetta, the officer in charge of the police department.

“I think if it was at night our injury numbers would have been up,” Lunetta said. “Had it had to happen, at least in the daytime a lot of people were not there.”

The gas main did not rupture, Gaffney said, and the gas that fed the flames could have escaped from a small breach, Gaffney said.

“It could be a nick,” he said.

Five of the victims were being were treated at Capital Health Regional Medical Center in Trenton, and two at Capital Health Medical Center – Hopewell, Louis D’Amelio, chairman of the department of surgery and director of trauma services, said. Some were undergoing surgery, he said.

There were no burn victims, D’Amelio said, and none of the injuries to the utility workers were considered life-threatening. He described them as minor to moderate.

He said the injuries included fractured legs and blast debris that had penetrated victims’ skin.

“The most severe injuries were lower extremity fractures, … basically the bones below the knee,” D’Amelio said. “The others were soft tissue injuries, blast injuries of the arms and legs, concussions from the force of the blast itself and then some minor shrapnel injuries and some lacerations also.”

Initially hearing that there was a potential mass casualty incident, hospital officials mobilized multiple trauma teams in Trenton and the acute surgery team at the Hopewell campus, D’Amelio said.

Shortly after the explosion, flames licked up from the ground near a vertical driller that work crews used to dig into the earth. A large wide trench that Gaffney said the work crews had dug was filling with water from water hoses manned by firefighters on extended ladders.

Little was left of some homes. Blackened wood and cinder blocks low to the ground were all that indicated a home used to be there. The ripped-open skeleton of a condo building was exposed on one side, as firefighters poured water on it and a dangling roof section to keep it from the flames.

Sections and chunks of insulation were stuck in the bare branches of trees and strewn across the ground. Condos on Pioneer Court, which faced away from the explosion, had their backs blown out or ruptured, and broken windows could be seen throughout the area.

Across the street from Pioneer, utility workers spray-painted pink X-marks on garage doors to note they were at least temporarily uninhabitable.

Despite the tornado-like devastation, some in the neighborhood got off lightly. Kelly Conrad and her fiancé Bob Britting had been in the process of selling their home on Pioneer Court. Their real estate agent called and told them about the explosion, and they asked a police officer on scene to get their 10-year-old bichon frise lap dog named Buddy out of their house, which sits directly behind the blast, Conrad said.

“He said the garage door was broken, but that’s it,” Conrad said after Buddy was rescued.

Jamison Fort said he is still trying to find out the status of his home at 24 Crockett Lane. A police officer on the scene “couldn’t tell me for sure. The first two are definitely are gone, but they don’t know the extent of the damage.”

Fort was at work at Foundation Academy in Trenton when a fellow teacher told him about the explosion, so he headed home.

The police investigation into the incident will eventually include interviews with the victims of the blast.

“We have not had any opportunity to talk to the injured PSE&G guys because they are in the hospital, but once it happens we’ll be able to start our investigation,” Lunetta said.

Tonight, state and local inspectors were going through the debris trying to assess the extent of the damage, Mayor Bert Steinmann said. County officials were at the West Trenton Fire Company headquarters working with displaced residents to help them find shelter for the night. The township and Red Cross were offering the firehouse as a shelter for the night, Steinmann said.

“For those individuals who need a place they can go there to keep warm and charge their phone batteries and get some refreshments,” Steinmann said.

Gaffney said PSE&G was investigating the cause of the blast alongside the state Board of Public Utilities. The utility has not experienced any problems in its previous dealings with Henkels & McCoy, he said.

Over 100 homes were evacuated immediately after the explosion, but most of the residents were expected to be able to return tonight after power was restored around 9 p.m.

Of the 55 homes that were damaged, at least 30 would not be habitable until at least tomorrow, officials said.

Staff writers Nicole Mulvaney and Brendan McGrath contributed to this report.

Contact Alex Zdan at azdan@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5705.

Contact Alyssa Mease at amease@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5673.

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