Tag Archives: JJ’s

Raw: Surveillance Video Shows K.C. Blast

AssociatedPress

Published on Feb 20, 2013

Surveillance video provided by Shelton Travel Service, Inc in Kansas City, Missouri, shows the massive explosion that destroyed a popular restaurant Tuesday. (Feb. 20)

Witnesses reported smelling gas before blast that leveled popular Kansas City restaurant

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A day after a natural gas explosion leveled a popular restaurant, investigators raced to search the rubble and tried to understand how the blast happened despite suspicions that flammable fuel had been leaking, maybe for weeks, somewhere in the busy outdoor shopping area.

Hours before the explosion, witnesses reported a strong smell of gas, and firefighters were summoned to the scene at one point but left without ordering an evacuation.

As the cleanup got under way Wednesday, search-and-rescue crews recovered a body, and the mayor worried that the debris could be concealing other victims.

Mayor Sly James declined to say whether the body was that of a man or a woman, though authorities had been looking for a missing woman who worked at JJ’s restaurant and had been seen there before the Tuesday evening blast. They previously said she was the only person still unaccounted for.

But James said at a news conference that authorities could not be “100 percent sure” they had accounted “for every single person that may have been at JJ’s when the explosion occurred.” The search started without a list of people who were in the building.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/