Body of woman killed in townhouse explosion in Sydney’s west found under rubble

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The body of a woman who died in a townhouse explosion has been found under the rubble in Sydney’s west. Multiple investigations are underway into the explosion -- with some residents saying they'd smelt gas there for weeks.

Transcript

00:00 Emergency services worst fears came to reality last night when they discovered the body of

00:07 a 30 year old woman underneath the rubble of this townhouse complex which exploded on

00:13 Saturday around lunchtime. The woman hasn't been formally identified. She's believed to

00:18 be the daughter of an elderly woman who lived in the complex and that she was visiting at

00:23 the time of the explosion. Now this has been an extremely complex, more than 24 hour long

00:29 rescue mission in which the initial phase literally involved emergency services, fire

00:34 and rescue crews picking up pieces of debris one by one, brick by brick, pylon by pylon

00:41 to try and remove that rubble as quickly as possible. Late last night they were able to

00:46 bring in some machinery including a crane so that they could pick up some of those more

00:51 heavy concrete slabs. Now that's where they found this woman. We also heard from police

00:56 a little earlier today about exactly what unfolded last night.

01:01 Removing the timber from the roof frame and then all the bricks, the tons and tons of

01:07 bricks but then the big challenge is being able to move through the concrete slabs and

01:12 so having to cut through the slabs to break bits of that off to gain access to then get

01:18 start the initial sort of look in there and then as we were able to because we'd removed

01:24 a lot of that overburden type material, we were able to then start breaking the larger

01:28 parts of the slab up and that was when we were utilising the crane to then try and remove

01:32 those in as big a sections as we possibly could.

01:36 Now the real focus will turn onto finding out what exactly happened and what caused

01:41 this massive explosion on Saturday around lunch time. We've heard from neighbours around

01:47 the area that they've been smelling gas from that particular complex for up to 12 months

01:52 but has been particularly strong for the past one to two weeks. So this has turned from

01:58 being a rescue mission to now the NSW Police taking over the scene and they will be conducting

02:04 a major investigation and preparing a report for the coroner. We've also had an impromptu

02:09 visit from the NSW Housing Minister. Housing NSW is also going to conduct an investigation

02:15 to see if anything slipped through the cracks.

02:18 Police were making it clear that they're very much in the preliminary investigation

02:22 stage. We just want to make sure that they have all of the information they need. We've

02:27 got the floor plans to them, all of the information about full maintenance log. But I mean it's

02:32 interesting just to see the damages very much at the rear of the property and a lot of the

02:38 maintenance issues had been in relation to meters at the front. So just still very much

02:43 in the preliminary investigation stage but just came out to make sure that all of that

02:47 cooperation was working as well as it could.

02:50 Now the State Government has offered temporary housing to anyone in the area, particularly

02:56 the exact complex that's been impacted and surrounding houses that have also been impacted.

03:01 They have temporary accommodation available and mental health support has also been opened

03:06 in the area at the Mount Druitt Community Health Centre.

03:09 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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