Explosion at Langley construction site rocks parts of Willoughby Town Centre
Posted July 26, 2023 10:22 am.
Last Updated July 26, 2023 3:50 pm.
A vehicle explosion at a construction site in the Township of Langley rocked some buildings in the Willoughby Town Centre area Wednesday morning.
According to the Langley RCMP, calls started coming in just before 10 a.m. about “a loud sound in and around” the centre.
“We sent officers there and we quickly learned that an explosion had happened at the construction site right at the Willoughby Town Centre,” explained Corp. Craig van Herk.
Listen to CityNews 1130 LIVE now!No injuries have been reported as a result of the explosion. BC EHS says one person was cared for at the scene but was not physically injured.
“I believe the truck involved was a welding truck, from what we can tell — it had some welding equipment on it,” said van Herk. “We do believe that it was the welding truck or a piece of equipment on the welding truck that was affected.”
He says, so far, nothing suggests there was anything suspicious about the explosion.
Many people took to social media to share that they had heard what sounded like a large explosion in the area before 10 a.m.
Explosion ‘blew pieces over top of buildings’: witness
Videos posted online and shared with CityNews show a vehicle completely destroyed, as crews douse it with water. Other vehicles near it in a parking lot are also severely damaged.
Mike Aichholz lives in the area. He tells CityNews it “felt like the elevators dropped in the building or like a big crane fell.”
“It shook the building,” he explained.
He says he walked over to the site of the explosion to see what exactly happened.
“It blew pieces over top of buildings onto the street by Shoppers Drug Mart, there’s nothing left of that vehicle,” Aichholz added. “I was scared but I didn’t know what it was or what had happened.”
Another witness at the scene told CityNews they saw the hood of the vehicle shoot up over 100 feet in the air. Debris from the explosion was still scattered across the town centre hours after the incident.
Robert Duhaime lives about a block away from the explosion site. He says he was working at his home when he heard a “loud boom.”
“The cats scurried off and afterward I went out to try and chat with my neighbours and investigate what happened,” he recalled.
Duhaime says one of his neighbours spotted smoke rising from an area nearby, noting there’s a lot of construction in the area.
“We all had a shockwave felt that rocked the house,” Duhaime said. “The walls were rocking, right? I was a little bit worried that a bomb was going off.”
The local says he’s never experienced anything like this, adding the situation “rocked [him] to the core.”
“I was trying to figure out, do we have to evacuate? What’s going on? My first worry was that my gas tank had exploded in my car or something like that. It actually felt close — but it was close, it was just a block away,” Duhaime told CityNews.
“As far as emotions go, (I felt) shock, the heart rate increasing.”
As officials blocked off the area around where the explosion happened, others also reported they thought there was an earthquake or a bomb that had been set off.
“I was just standing here and then there was this loud explosion and you could feel the impact of the explosion,” one person told CityNews.
“It felt like it was an earthquake coming on. It was just like a loud blast and compression,” another person said.
After the explosion, a nearby daycare was evacuated as a precaution.
“Everyone started coming out from the daycare and then I knew it was an emergency. So, I was about to turn my car around and I think my car was dragging some of the parts. I didn’t know if they were mine or the parts from somewhere else,” a witness reported.
The cause of the explosion is under investigation.
