A former resident of a Regina building blown up in a natural gas explosion described the force of the explosion from a block away..Simon Robillard was sleeping in his living room almost a full block north of the explosion when it occurred. A mirror on the wall fell to the floor and sent a glass shard into his thumb..“Everything was just shaking, like I thought at time that the house had just blew up where I was living. Suddenly that mirror just shattered down and it scared the hell out of me. And I wasn't too sure what was happening. I thought they dropped the bomb or something,” Robillard recalled..Robillard experienced pain and swelling in his thumb after waking. When he finally got it examined the next day, staff at a medical clinic found a shard of glass had been driven in. The glass was removed, the swelling lanced, and the thumb bandaged..An apartment building next to the exploded building also suffered severe damage..The building will be demolished, leaving two residents displaced. Robillard said he used to live in Suite 9 in that adjacent building and returned to look at the damage..“And here I walked out and I looked towards where I was living. Oh my God, it's a good thing that nobody never got killed in that explosive. It's a big house, too that one, eh? See how it looks. That was a big explosion. And these people that were on my way to visit me, they saw that explosion,” Robillard said..“Half of that suite was gone. Normally I would sleep in the living room. The living room was half gone. I always smelled the gas all the time and finally that explodes. I wonder why. Why did it happen? Was the gas leaking or something?”.The house exploded with such force, windows broke four blocks away..The explosion happened just before 11 am Sunday at the corner of 6 Avenue and Retallack Street. The building was vacant, though Regina police evacuated people from nearby properties..Windows were blown out as far as four blocks away on Albert Street. One person who lived four properties away from the explosion had minor glass abrasions due to a window that blew in from the explosion. .Regina Fire & Protective Services (RFPS) boarded up nearby buildings with damaged windows and investigated the explosion with the help of the Regina Police Service bomb unit. The area remained blocked off as of Monday afternoon with some debris left in the street and shingles in trees by the sidewalk..In a statement, the RFPS said: “Fire investigators located a gas line within the property that had been compromised and determined this explosion was related to natural gas… A thorough investigation determined the property is all clear and no victims were located.”.The extensive damage from the blast prevented investigators from finding the source of the ignition. The building was a low-income housing unit that belonged to Saskatchewan Housing Corporation that still had gas and power despite having no residents.
