Early-morning explosion severely damages Hamilton house

A gas explosion around 4:15 a.m. severely damaged a house in the 600 block of Ross Avenue, but nobody was seriously injured, fire officials said.

“We’re doing an investigation on it right now,” said Hamilton Fire Chief Mark Mercer. “It doesn’t seem to be suspicious. We haven’t nailed down the cause, but it seems like it was a gas leak. It seems pretty apparent.”

“We’re just a little bit at a loss of what it was.”

The blast was triggered when a resident “turned on a light switch on the back porch, and then it exploded.”

The gas leak was in the basement, but some gas had reached upper portions of the house. The person who flipped the switch was slightly injured and declined transport to a hospital. Firefighters quickly extinguished a small amount of fire in the basement.

“There was a lot of structural damage where the fire was, mostly in the back-porch area,” Mercer said, “and a little bit in the basement as well.”

Damage was estimated to be $50,000.

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