The ranch sitting directly across from the explosion at 135 …

Special to The Vindicator | published: September 19, 2008

The ranch sitting directly across from the explosion at 135 Townsend Street may have incurred the most damage. The garage was completely crushed by the blast force. The kitchen and living room look as though they weathered mortar fire. A three-by-four foot hole blown in the kitchen offered a grim view of the collapsed garage and a five-by-six foot hole opened the living room to the outdoors. The owner of home, Bob Delpine, escaped injury by sheer luck. He had been remodeling the kitchen area all day before stepping out for a beer on his porch just after 6 p.m. “If I were standing there, they would have scraped me off the wall,” Delpine said, pointing to his kitchen sink, now filled with chips of drywall. Delpine estimated the damage to his house at $50,000, at least. “That’s not a generous estimate,” Delpine said.