The wife and daughter of Kevin Sebunia, one of the victims in the fatal Aug. 12 home explosion in Plum, are sharing their story just over a month since the man they say had a “heart of gold” passed away.

Kelly Sebunia, Kevin’s wife, and their daughter, Emily Brizee, sat down with Tribune-Review news partner WTAE to discuss their loss and frustration with the investigation after the tragedy in the Rustic Ridge neighborhood.

Six people died in the explosion: Sebunia, 55; Paul Oravitz, 56, and his wife, Heather, 51; Mike Thomas, 57; and Casey Clontz, 38, and his son, Keegan, 12. They were in the home at 141 Rustic Ridge Drive when it exploded, authorities say.

Three homes were destroyed by the blast; 10 homes have been identified as possibly being structurally compromised. An investigation is ongoing.

The interview will air on “WTAE Listens” at 11:30 a.m. Sunday.

The investigation

Not knowing Kevin’s final moments is painful, Brizee said.

“There’s a comfort in knowing that you can be with them when they pass. And I think for us, all of these unknowns, all of these questions, leaves an extremely uneasy feeling. And, until we start to have some answers, we will not be able to move forward in the grieving process,” Brizee said.

On Aug. 12, Sebunia said, she was headed to Cleveland for a girls trip with family. She said Kevin planned to finish a section of railing at their home and visit a friend’s home to work on a patio roof.

Phone records indicate a call from Paul Oravitz and another call from Kevin to Casey Clontz and, she said, they are trying to retrieve texts and downloads to try to piece together what happened.

“There’s been so many rumors of, you know, people have said crazy things, which are totally untrue, like there was a meth lab, that they were replacing a hot water tank. From what I can piece together … that does not seem to be the case,” Sebunia said. “I believe that my husband was called up there for something that may have been going on, but they weren’t, like, actively replacing something, that I’m aware of.”

She recalled learning about the explosion when a neighbor called and said to immediately come home. When they hung up, she called and called Kevin, but he didn’t answer.

“I was almost to my daughter’s house in Cleveland, and finally we pulled over to a rest stop, the first place we could find to pull over, and I called my neighbor back again. And she, the second time, she just kept saying, ‘You have to get home. You have to get home,’ and hung up again on me,” Sebunia said. “And finally when I called her a third time, I kept saying to her, ‘Is Kevin’s truck there? If his truck’s there, he should be home.’

“And that’s when she said … she said that my husband … I don’t know how she knew, but she said that my husband was in the basement.”

She was told they were trying to rescue the people in the basement, and she knows there was a communication out from somebody else in the basement that they were trying to get out.

“I’d like to believe that my husband passed, you know, instantly,” Sebunia said. “I would like to think that, because I don’t think that there was any way he wouldn’t have called me.”

Seeking answers

Sebunia tries to avoid news stories about the explosion. She believes its cause is not simply a faulty hot water tank.

“This explosion was felt in neighborhoods in areas much farther away than just in our little circle of Rustic Ridge,” she said.

It’s hard to say what caused the blast, Sebunia said.

“I mean, I can tell you from experience and being with my husband that many years, gas was something he didn’t mess with. If he would have gone in and smelled a strong smell of gas, he certainly wouldn’t have stayed in there.”

A village

Sebunia and Brizee hope the investigation is thorough — not only to give closure to the victims’ families but also so people can feel safe in their homes.

“I have a lot of feelings of anger and frustration because I just don’t think there’s transparency in what’s happening right now.,” Brizee said.

Brizee said the unknown makes her family unable to grieve. She said the victims’ families deserve justice.

“This (is) a call to action from our families that we want answers and we deserve those,” she said.

Sebunia said her immediate reaction was that she would never go back to Plum even though her roots are there.

“It’s hard to walk away from a house that you spend your whole life building, and my memories of my husband are there and all the work that he did,” she said. “But it’s also a very sad reminder, too, in the fact that he died three houses away from where I live.

“But this is my tribe, my village … my family.”

‘Pillar of this community’

“Kevin was truly my soul mate. And not everyone finds that in their life. I was really fortunate,” Sebunia said.

Brizee and Sebunia remembered Kevin as authentic and genuine, an “amazing man.”

“I can definitely say that people loved to be around him. His personality was truly effervescent,” Brizee said. “And he has this, as it’s been (said) many times, a heart of gold. And I think that truly does embody the spirit of my father. He was larger than life and what I would consider a pillar of this community.”

As the family grieves, the community’s response has been “overwhelming,” Sebunia said, expressing her gratitude for the outpouring of support.

Those neighbors were a tight-knit group, Sebunia said.

“Even though my girls moved away, this was our home, and these were all our best friends that passed away. So I’m not only grieving the loss of my husband, I’m grieving the loss of all of my friends, all of our homes,” Sebunia said.

That’s what makes the tragedy so much harder for the family, the women said.

“There will always be a piece of me that will be missing, and I don’t think that I will ever feel whole again,” Brizee said.

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