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Charlie and Martina Hite, two of the three people who died in the horrific Indiana house explosion Wednesday, were partners in marriage and in business with a connection to their community.
The couple, 43 and 37, both worked at the same Fresh Market store in Evansville Indiana and also had a regular flea market table, while Charlie was a volunteer for the high school football team.
Charlie’s brother Steve – the equipment manager for that same Harrison High School team – was headed to Charlie’s home to pick him up when he heard the blast about five minutes away, according to the Courier & Press.
Steve’s brother would shoot video and hand out equipment in an unpaid role for the school.
Aaron Hite, Steve’s son and Charlie’s nephew, said the couple had no children, only pets.
He added that his aunt and uncle were loving and supportive and had helped him move into his first Evansville apartment.
A Gofundme has been set up to cover end-of-life expenses for the couple and anything else the family may need.
Jessica Teague, 29, was the third person killed in the explosion.
Charlie and Martina Hite, two of the three people who died in the horrific Indiana house explosion Thursday, were partners in marriage and in business with a connection to their community. The couple, 43 and 37, both worked at the same Fresh Market store in Evansville Indiana and also had a regular flea market table
A Ring doorbell camera caught the terrifying moment a house exploded in Evansville, Indiana, killing the Hites and Teague and damaging 39 homes in a residential neighborhood.
Maddie Struble posted the video to Facebook late Wednesday night, showing debris flying before it clears up to reveal the front porch of her home with an American flag still flying.
Roof slats were seen bent and broken on top of the porch, as smoke enveloped the area and a home across the street was destroyed.
‘Luckily, Trevor and I were not home; however our home is unlivable,’ Struble captioned the video.
‘We cannot thank the Evansville Police Department for all of their help with finding our dogs and getting them back to us,’ she wrote, noting: ‘Our cat is still out there, so please be on the lookout for him.
‘Our hearts go out to the people across the street who lost their lives from this tragic event.’
The blast was reported around 1pm in the 1000 block of North Weinbach Avenue in Evansville and had a 100-foot blast radius, officials said, which completely leveled one house where the explosion occurred, split another in half and heavily damaged 39 others.
One resident, Dorthy Waters, described the blast as a ‘sonic boom.’
‘I thought a bomb fell on us or like a tree fell through the house,’ she told 14 News. ‘It shook so hard, it went through my chest, it shook my windows.
‘I don’t know what happened, but I’m very sad about these people.’
Three people were killed in the impact, and another was transported to a nearby hospital for non life-threatening injuries. Their names have not yet been released, pending notification of next of kin.
Authorities now warn there may be others after they called off search efforts Wednesday night due to the ‘instability’ of the homes, Fire Chief Mike Connelly said in a news conference Thursday morning.
He said crews were being called to the scene on Thursday to shore up the homes so the Fire Department could continue its search efforts but at least 11 homes need to be completely torn down and are ‘uninhabitable.’
The American Red Cross assisted 15 families who were displaced in the explosion.
Evansville fire officials were expected to give an update at 11am local time.
A Ring doorbell caught the moment a house across the street in Evansville, Indiana Wednesday afternoon. It shows debris flying around North Weinbach Avenue
After the debris cleared up, roof slats could be seen covering Maddie Struble’s front porch, and the home across the street was completely gone
In a news conference on Thursday morning, Connelly said the Evansville Fire Department first received a call about a home explosion at 12.59pm on Wednesday, and the first units arrived on the scene by 1.02pm.
A structural collapse team was also called to the scene, as was the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who were investigating the explosion.
CenterPoint Energy, the local gas utility, meanwhile, found no evidence of a natural gas explosion. It was last called to the home where the explosion originated in January 2018.
The cause of the explosion remains unclear, Connelly said in his news conference Thursday, noting: ‘It’s going to be a very tedious process.’
He previously said debris including ‘typical construction materials’ like wooden boards, window glass and insulation were strewn over a 100-foot radius.
Aerial video shows the scale of devastation caused by an explosion at a house in southern Indiana on Wednesday morning that killed at least three people and damaged as many as 39 homes
At least three people were killed in the impact of the explosion, and one other resident was brought to a local hospital with non life threatening injuries
A total of 39 homes were destroyed in the blast, and 11 are now completely uninhabitable
Drew Strader captured video of the destruction following the blast where a home has been reduced to complete rubble, and adjacent home was split in half
Evansville Fire Department personnel examine the scene after a house explosion at 1010 North Weinbach Avenue in Evansville, Indiana
Fire Department crews had to call off their search efforts Wednesday night due to the instability of some of the homes
Aerial video posted on social media showed the extent of the damage in a residential neighborhood as police and fire vehicles remained on the the scene in Evansville, on the Kentucky border.
Photos posted by Mayor Lloyd Winnecke also showed the destruction of the explosion with pieces of homes scattered across the neighborhood and emergency workers sifting through the debris.
Resident Drew Slader, who lived nearby, told local news outlets that he was sitting on his couch when the force of the blast threw him several feet. He shared video from inside his damaged home that showed broken window frames and kitchen cabinets hanging from the wall.
Slader told local news outlets that he was sitting down when the forced of the blast threw him off the couch
He shared video from inside his damaged home that show broken window frames and kitchen cabinets hanging from the wall
Vincent Taylor, meanwhile, was working on a roof two blocks away from the explosion, and when it went off he said he saw debris falling from the sky.
Taylor immediately rushed over to the scene, he told 14 News, where he ‘saw the guy in the grass, and it looked bad.
‘A lot of people lost everything down here, their houses are totally gone,’ he said. ‘It’s bad.
Jacki Baumgart, an office manager at Award World Trophies about two and a half blocks from the site of the explosion, also said she and other employees in their the building panicked when they heard the loud blast and saw smoke.
‘We thought a tree fell on the building or a car ran into the place,’ Baumgart said. ‘Debris from the ceiling came down.’
She continued: ‘Everybody here immediately ran out of the building. We thought the building was going to come down.’
And neighbor Roxane Weber, who lives just about a half block down the road from the blast said she is ‘worried for other people around them,’ noting ‘it’s mostly older folks on that end.’
Ron Ryan carries his Chihuahuas, Molly, 14, left, and Fifi, 13, to his partner, Patty Hite, after a house explosion occurred in the 1000 block of Weinbach Avenue. The dogs were trapped in the home for more than three hours before they were allowed to retrieve them as well as their guinea pig
Photos posted by the mayor show damage in a residential neighborhood with police and fire vehicles on the scene in Evansville, on the Kentucky border
Emergency workers were on the scene of the house explosion on Wednesday in Evansville, Indiana
A blue house was destroyed when another nearby exploded. At least 11 of the 39 homes damaged in the explosion are ‘uninhabitable,’ Connelly told the Evansville Courier & Press
Evansville Police Department posted to Facebook a plea for footage of the incident.
‘Our thoughts are with those closely involved with the explosion that happened on N. Weinbach this afternoon,’ they wrote.
‘As more information becomes available the respective agencies investigating will be able to provide more information.
‘N. Weinbach between Columbia and Oak Hill will be shut down for the foreseeable future, please plan an alternate route.
If anyone has footage of the incident, please forward a copy of the video to our Detectives Unit at whunt@evansvillepolice.com.’
Emergency crews respond to a house explosion in Evansville, Ind., Wednesday afternoon
People gather at an intersection as emergency crews respond to a house explosion in the 1000 block of North Weinbach Avenue in Evansville, Indiana on Wednesday
Emergency works sift through the debris of an explosion that killed three people and destroyed at least 39 houses
At least 39 houses were damaged in the massive explosion that was caught on camera
Debris covered the ground and streets throughout the neighborhood after a house explosion on Wednesday
The explosion on Wednesday was the second house explosion in the area in just over five years. A house explosion on June 27, 2017, killed two people and injured three others.
Five people were inside a home at 1717 Hercules Avenue when the structure exploded and rocked the neighborhood.
Three people made it out, but Sharon Mand and Kathleen Woolems died of smoke inhalation, TriState homepage reported.
Officials said the explosion ‘blew the roof up, blew the walls out, and then everything comes down around on top of it’ and that there were ‘parts of the building that were across the street and several hundred feet away.’
The cause of the explosion was suspected to be a gas leak, according to officials, but said it was undetermined, ‘because we never could really pin down exactly the cause of that leak.’