Fire Chief, Neighbors React To Hibbing House Explosion

HIBBING, Minn. – A house explosion in Hibbing Sunday night sent flames into the air and injured one person.  One day later, heavy equipment moved in, as the investigation into a cause of the blast continued.

“All the neighbors were out, pajamas, bathrobes, whatever. People just came out. Everybody was chasing dogs every which way trying to, I suppose, when it exploded, it scared everybody’s dogs. Everybody’s dogs ran,” said Crystal Marinucci, a neighbor on the block of the explosion. “Never, ever, ever seen anything like this before, ever. It was shocking.”

Hibbing Fire Chief Erik Jankala said his department arrived on scene within four minutes of the call for help. He said he’s never responded to a house explosion before in his 32 years in public safety, but that it is something his team trains for.

This is a little bit more tedious and tenuous than our typical house fire for us. So we’re just making sure that we’re, you know, dotting all the I’s and crossing all the T’s as to figure out a cause of an event of this nature,” Jankala explained Monday. “As we work through the process, we’re going to do the things that we have to do right now to ensure that the neighborhood is safe, to let everybody come back in, and then we’re going to be working here for probably several days to start digging this out, to look at an exact cause. We don’t want to speculate as to what that may be at this time.”

Meanwhile, FOX 21 learned the home next door to the explosion was also destroyed, and two cats inside died.

Family members said the home’s windows blew from the initial explosion, which sent smoke throughout the structure, and then flames from the explosion pushed through the broken windows.

GoFundMe pages have been set up for both families affected. Click here for both.