10 houses near site of Plum explosion being examined for structural integrity
Ten homes near a massive explosion that leveled three other houses in Plum last Saturday and killed six people will have to be examined by building experts to determine whether people can live in them again.
Allegheny County released a statement Saturday that included for the first time the exact number of damaged homes and their safety status.
The county statement said those 10 homes currently are deemed uninhabitable.
“That doesn’t mean that the house will be torn down. It just means that property owners need to have a structural engineer analyze the structure to determine next steps,” the statement said.
The house where the explosion occurred, 141 Rustic Ridge Drive, was destroyed, as well as the houses flanking it when they caught fire.
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All six people who died were at the property where the house exploded.
The victims were homeowners Paul Oravitz, 56, and his wife, Heather Oravitz, 51; and neighbors Mike Thomas, 57; Kevin Sebunia, 55; Casey Clontz, 38, and his son, Keegan Clontz, 12.
The county statement said four victims were found inside the basement. A fifth was outside of the garage.
The sixth, Paul Oravitz, was lying in the yard and pulled from the immediate area. Oravitz was hospitalized but died Wednesday.
The county said borough, county and state investigators are working to determine the cause.
The county said Peoples, which supplies natural gas to the neighborhood, “has worked with (the Allegheny County Fire Marshal’s Office) and the entire Plum community every day. They have involved (fire marshal) deputies in all of their local system testing, which adds great value to the investigation, leaving no stone unturned.”
Neighbors have said the Oravitzes had an issue with their hot water heater and neighbors had come over to help.
The cause of the blast, however, remains under investigation.
The fire marshal’s office reiterated that in four previous explosions that have occurred at houses in Plum since the mid-1990s, investigators have “not seen any sign of these events being of a single source, or of the same origin or cause.”
“That being said,” the statement continued, “the investigation is ongoing, and so whether there are any other common denominators is undetermined.”
Dave Williams is the TribLive night news editor. A Harrison native and Tarentum resident, Dave has worked for the Trib and one of its predecessors since 1978. He started as a sports reporter but soon transitioned to news. He became an assistant city editor in the late 1980s, briefly served as editorial page editor, but mostly has served as night editor for about 30 years.He can be reached at dwilliams@triblive.com.
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