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A terrifying explosion lifted a Long Island home off its foundation yesterday and left it in ruins as its owner suffered horrible burns and neighbors scrambled for cover.
“My house shook — it absolutely shook,” said Louise Lippmann, 86, a retired country-club hostess who lives two blocks away from the explosion site in Syosset.
“My son said, ‘Maybe it was a plane breaking the sound barrier.’ I said, ‘That was no plane!’ I went to the front door, and I could smell something smoldering.”
The disaster — which eerily reminded neighbors of an explosion that leveled a nearby house two decades ago — occurred just before 12:30 p.m. at the Alexander Drive home of Brian Welsh, a guidance counselor at Half Hollows HS West in Dix Hills.
His registered-nurse wife, Helena, and their three young kids were not home, but Welsh, 51, was doing work in the basement at the time, possibly trying to repair a clothes dryer, authorities said.
The explosion blew out the front of the house, buckled exterior and interior walls, and blasted bricks into the driveway, said authorities.
“The house was literally lifted off the foundation,” said Oyster Bay Town Supervisor John Venditto, whose jurisdiction includes the home.
Syosset Fire Chief Robert Kaplan, whose department was one of three to respond, said, “The roof blew off” and “the floor collapsed into the basement.”
Brian Welsh somehow got out of the basement amid the chaos, and collapsed onto his front lawn — where a gas-meter reader who happened to be working down the block ran over to help him.
Welsh “was semiconscious” and had “burns across his body” when firefighters arrived, Kaplan said.
One firefighter was overheard saying about Welsh, “How the hell did he get out of that basement?”
Welsh was rushed to Nassau County University Medical Center, where he was listed in serious but stable condition in the burn center, a spokeswoman said.
Two birds survived without a scratch — a parakeet named Sid and an African grey parrot named Simon.
“We don’t know exactly what the cause was,” Kaplan said. “We’re assuming it was gas.”
But the chief noted that “there was no odor of gas” reported before the explosion, and afterward gas meters did not detect a leak in the area.
Authorities said the house likely will be demolished today after bomb and arson squads finish their investigation.