The pictures are absolutely terrible. There is this wounded, haggard. These bodies, lying on the ground. And then this explosion, incredibly violent. Ten people died and around 40 others were injured in the explosion of a gas tanker in Boksburg on Saturday, about 40 kilometers east of Johannesburg. Early in the morning, the truck got stuck under a bridge, near a hospital and homes.
“We received a call around 7:50 a.m. The firefighters left to put out the beginning of the fire. Unfortunately, the truck then exploded,” said William Ntladi, spokesman for the emergency services in this area. Amateur videos circulating on social media show a huge fireball exploding below the bridge. The tank truck was probably too high to pass through this place.
It was filled with 60,000 liters of LPG gas, used in particular for ovens and cookers, and arrived from the south-east of the country, added the spokesperson, adding that its injured driver was hospitalized. Of the forty injured, half are in serious condition, 15 others are seriously affected but in stable condition, while six firefighters were slightly injured, said the spokesman.
“Huge Shake”
Jean Marie Booysen heard an explosion in the early morning, shortly after 6:30 a.m. “It’s a very sad day for our little suburb”, about forty km east of Johannesburg, lamented this blonde woman, long hair and short bangs, in her sixties, a few steps from the scientific police combing the scene of the disaster.
“He had a huge jolt. I grew up here so immediately I thought to myself It’s not related to mining. It’s more like 6.5 on the Richter scale,” she explains. “I went upstairs and saw huge flames. I thought a house was burning. I called the fire brigade, they assured me that they were already on their way,” she added.
Then the bad news followed in the morning. “On the other side of the road, there are two children, a 16-year-old girl, a 25-year-old young man who came to mow my lawn” regularly. “They are no longer there, they are both dead”. William, who does not want to give his last name, was a few hundred meters from the explosion. “Several of us have burns in the back, stones”, in particular from a station near the explosion, flew. “You can see them there on the ground,” said the black man in his forties, pointing to the roadway covered in debris.