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Harrow explosion: 'It's a miracle she survived'
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| Picture by Simon Jacobs |
A council gravedigger has told how he saved a teenage girl's life after she was trapped by last night's explosion in south Harrow.
Andrew Haynes, 44, was one of the first on the scene of the blast in Stanley Road when he heard a girl screaming for help.
He saw an arm sticking out from under the wreckage of the two houses which had collapsed, and began digging to reach the trapped girl.
He said: "When I found her, she was entombed in bricks from the house.
"She looked like she was in a pretty bad way, covered in dust, badly burned and bleeding round the neck and stomach."
Mr Haynes, a gravedigger for Harrow Council, pulled the 17-year-old girl from the wreckage with the help of two other men.
She was taken to hospital when paramedics arrived on the scene and is now being treated at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for 20 per cent burns to her body.
Mr Haynes said: "Considering what she had gone through, with a house falling down on top of her, it's a miracle she survived. She is blessed."
He was called into action when the explosion ripped through the houses near to his home in Sherwood Road, at around 9.40pm last night.
He and his family were watching BBC's The Apprentice when the suspected gas explosion happened, blowing out nearby windows and shaking surrounding buildings.
He said: "It was the biggest explosion I have ever heard, it was like an atomic bomb going off."
He ran out of his house and said it was hard to see what was happening because there was dust everywhere.
One man was killed in the blast, and another was taken to hospital suffering from head injuries.
Firefighters are still on the scene, sifting through the rubble, and police are waiting to start investigating the cause of the blast.
They are treating it as a crime scene and are treating the explosion as suspicious.
4:35pm Thursday 8th May 2008
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