Staff photo / Ed Runyan Bob Thomas and his dog Maverick took a walk past their neighbor’s house on Huxley Road in Ellsworth Township on Monday morning. The house exploded Saturday morning, killing four people, but the State Fire Marshal’s Office says it is still investigating to determine what caused the explosion. Pieces of the house were blown throughout the neighborhood.

ELLSWORTH — The Ohio State Fire Marshal’s Office says it is trying to positively identify the four people who died in a Saturday morning explosion on Huxley Road in Ellsworth Township, but neighbors already have been mourning the death of their friends who owned the home.

Jarrod Clay, public information officer for The State Fire Marshal’s Fire & Explosion Investigations Bureau, which is leading the investigation, said Monday the agency was going to meet with other agencies involved in the ongoing investigation.

“Investigators will be primarily focused on positively identifying the four individuals who were killed, and identifying insurance companies that may be involved with the investigation,” he said. “At this time, investigators will not make any determination as to what caused the fire and explosion until all evidence is collected and medical examiners have fully identified all of the victims.”

Meanwhile, neighbors, who have had two days to process the devastating explosion, expressed their sadness.

“The human side is the hardest part, because you see the family pictures and things like that on the ground, and it just rips your heart apart,” Tracey Beardsley, whose house is directly across the street from the home at 8521 Huxley Road, where the explosion happened, said.

“It blew me right out of the chair. It was just crazy. Thank God I’m an early riser because where the bedroom window blew out, my bed sits real close to that window and all of that glass would have been on top of me. Who knows if I would have been hurt,” she said.

“I’m always up early. I had finished my breakfast. I was sitting at the dining room table. This happened at about 7:15. It lifted me out of my chair and just pushed me into the wall, and then I heard the glass breaking all around me,” she said. “I couldn’t fathom what it was. Because we live so close to a little airport down here on (state) Route 45, I thought a small plane had engine trouble and crashed right around here.

“Because of the force of the blast, your whole innards are shaking, and then I thought it was an earthquake,” she said. “In those few short seconds, your mind must go through 50 different things, so I covered my head. And as fast as it came, it stopped,” she said. “I looked out and saw Jeff and Joanne’s house just gone, this plume of smoke and debris,” she said. She said there was relatively little smoke, only a couple of spots for the fire department to extinguish.

Beardsley’s home is about 400 feet away from the road, and the force of the explosion broke or damaged most of the windows on the front of her house.

“I grabbed my phone and ran down the driveway. By then my neighbor Tyler, whose farm is over there, and Cody, who is next door, were already running” to get to the exploded house, she said.

As Beardsley looked across at the debris left where a house used to be, she said she could see “Jeff’s” pickup truck in the large garage at the end of their driveway. She also posted to two other vehicles in the yard, away from the driveway.

She said she’s been told those vehicles belong to Joanne and to the couple’s daughter and son-in-law. They were parked there because the couple was having work done on their home, Beardsley said.

The materials that were being installed were stored on their driveway, so that is why the two vehicles were parked on the other side of their yard, Beardsley said.

Debris — much of it insulation — flew across Huxley Road and into her row of arborvitae trees near the road. But other debris flew completely past the trees. Some pieces of framing wood splintered into sharp spearlike pieces, some of which landed point down in her front yard.

The force of the blast blew items from inside the house into the couple’s own trees in front of their house, into their backyard and into other yards. One big tree in front remained littered with clothing Monday morning. A partial piece of plywood was stuck on a utility wire on Beardsley’s side of the street.

“Stuff like this you see in hurricanes and tornadoes, like that piece of plywood,” Beardsley said. “Just crazy.”

She thinks the arborvitae trees blocked more of the debris from the explosion from reaching her home.

Kala Christy, who lives next door to the house that exploded with her husband and son, said her family was “very close” with the couple that apparently died in the explosion. “My son was like their grandkid. We were with them every day. They were over here when we were working in our back garage, or we were over there when he was working on his race bikes.”

She called the couple “very loving, very down to earth, great people. They would do anything for you.” She said when her family moved in eight years ago, “They took us right in.” She said her son is taking it hard.

She said she was in bed when the explosion happened. “And then the house just shook, like an earthquake was happening, and stuff was falling off of my walls.” She said she left her bedroom and looked at her son, and “his eyes were like huge. He didn’t know what happened.”

Christy’s home suffered extensive damage — the foundation shifted about seven inches, the windows bowed out, the trusses in the attic were destroyed, pushing nails through the ceiling, it put cracks in their walls, and the door jams are broken.

The state fire marshal’s office told their family not to use their garage because of the foundation damage, which could cause the garage to collapse, Christy said.

She said she’s grateful for the large garage between her home and the home that exploded. If it had not been there, the explosion “probably would have leveled my house,” she said.