Two people died and three others were injured after a house explosion in Granville, Vermont, on Saturday night. Vermont State Police and the Department of Public Safety Fire and Explosion Investigation Unit later said the blast came from a propane leak inside the home.
Officials identified the dead as Liam O’Sullivan, 20, and Sarah O’Sullivan, 46, both of Essex Junction. First responders got the call around 7:45 p.m. Saturday. Liam O’Sullivan was pronounced dead at the scene, and Sarah O’Sullivan was rushed to Gifford Medical Center in Randolph, where she later died.
Brenda Buker on the blast
Brenda Buker, who lives nearby, said she was having dinner with friends when the explosion hit. Vermont Lottery posts Powerball results ran separately, but Buker said, "We heard a loud boom and stopped mid sentence, didn’t know what had happened," and added, "It was really loud. It shook the house. My husband was in the kitchen and things fell off the walls and he came out and said ‘what was that?’"
She said the noise sounded close enough that she and others first thought it was fireworks. "But we really thought it was related to the fireworks, had no idea that it had been a house explosion, and we didn’t find that out until the morning unfortunately," she said. She also said, "But it was of an impact that you knew something had, that it was a really serious explosion and I could smell something in the air as well about five minutes after it had happened," after the blast.
Granville investigation
The Department of Public Safety Fire and Explosion Investigation Unit classified the explosion as accidental after determining the propane leak inside the home caused it. Two of the three injured adults had minor injuries, and one had critical injuries. Metropolitan Police Department Reports 61-Year-Old Dies in Crash appeared in separate coverage, while this incident left Granville with a fatal fire-and-explosion case that affected five people directly.
Buker described Granville as rural, saying, "It’s really rural, you know, you don’t even see your neighbors houses right here, so Granville very rarely hits the news, so this was unusual," a detail that fits the scene investigators found after the call around 7:45 p.m. What caused the propane leak inside the home was not answered in the findings, leaving the start of the chain unresolved even as the blast itself was ruled accidental.
