Three people were seriously injured Friday morning when a house on Lake Lanier was destroyed in a massive explosion.
Fire officials said the 5,000-square-foot brick house was leveled in the blast around 5:30 a.m. The house was located at 6007 Blackberry Lane, just north of Buford.
Hall County Fire Chief David Kimbrell said two men and a woman were rushed to area hospitals for treatment. He told the AJC that one person was blown out of the house and rescuers had to dig two others out of the rubble. A neighbor found the man who was blown out of the house under some debris, and helped him move farther away from the house.
Neighbors identified those in the home as Daniel and Susan Johnson and Michael Clack, Susan Johnson's adult son. Clack, 34, was transported to a burn unit in Augusta, where he was listed in good condition Saturday afternoon. Susan Johnson, 55, was transported to Atlanta Medical Center and Daniel Johnson, 58, was in the Northeast Georgia Medical Center. Both of the Johnsons were listed in stable condition.
Kimbrell told Channel 2 Action News that a "small gas leak" may have been the cause of the blast. He said there is no natural gas line serving the neighborhood, but the house had a 200-pound LP tank.
"This house is extremely well insulated," he said. "It has the spray-in foam insulation, which makes it extremely tight, so any kind of leak actually stays inside the structure much more than an older house that is not as tight."
Kimbrell said the three residents were apparently upstairs when the blast occurred, which he said was fortunate because it appeared that the seat of the explosion was downstairs on the back side of the house.
"If they had been in the basement or the ground level, we would probably still be trying to find them and extricate them," Kimbrell said several hours after the explosion. "They were extremely lucky to be upstairs."
Kimbrell said that dispatchers got calls from residents in Gwinnett and Forsyth counties in addition to Hall County reporting that they felt the vibration from the explosion. He said he lives 10 or 12 miles away and also heard the blast.
There was no fire, Kimbrell said.
Neighbors told Channel 2 that the couple had done extensive renovations on the house, including the installation of a large gas stove.
Lucille Matte, who lives three to four houses down from the house that exploded, told the AJC that she and her family felt a huge jolt as they slept.
"It sounded like something hit our house, that's how loud it was," she said. "It shook us up ... It's a miracle that they even got them out."
She described the house as a "Big, beautiful, gorgeous house that I admired every time I walked down there.
"It was horrible, just horrible. They just need prayers right now," Matte said.
-- AJC photographer Brant Sanderlin and staff writer Alexis Stevens contributed to this article.
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