Rustic Ridge explosion sends different kind of shock wave through Plum's Holiday Park section

A lot on Hialeah Drive in Plum’s Holiday Park neighborhood where a house exploded and burned in April 2022 is just a grassy space between two other homes today.

Since the Allegheny County Fire Marshal’s office released the scene, it’s been cleaned up and sold, with a new house expected to be built there, said Greg Fischer, who lives across the street.

News that another house exploded in Plum, this time in the Rustic Ridge neighborhood on Saturday, sent shock waves through Holiday Park, about a four-mile drive away.

“A lot of people look at it and are like, what is going on here?” Fisher said.

Chris Duffy, a former firefighter who lives nearby on Hialeah, ran to his neighbor’s house to help that night more than a year ago. He was listening on a scanner to the response on Rustic Ridge.

“I feel for them,” he said Sunday, taking a break from building a new front porch on his house. “It took a lot to stay home and not run over there.”

While authorities have yet to identify causes for either explosion, Fischer said they appear quite different from each other. Speculation in his neighborhood is rampant.

Fischer saw the video of the massive blast that obliterated the house at 141 Rustic Ridge and destroyed the houses on either side, killing five.

“It looked like a missile hit,” he said.

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But, while the explosion at 5021 Hialeah shook Fischer’s home, it did not blow out his windows or blow off his roof. The houses on either side are still standing.

And nobody died at Hialeah.

“This house did not explode like that one,” Fischer said. “That was taken out by the fire, not the explosion. (Rustic Ridge) was blown to smithereens.”

Immediately after the explosion, Fischer said his neighborhood was flooded with gawkers. Life has since returned to normal.

“These are isolated incidents,” he said. But he acknowledged two home explosions in a little more than a year in the same borough could raise some eyebrows.

“I understand how it looks.”

“There’s got to be a reason for what happened there,” he said. “That will eventually come to light.”