EUREKA, Mo. — Firefighters responded late Friday night to a house explosion in unincorporated Jefferson County, Missouri.
According to the Eureka Fire Protection District, crews from multiple departments responded to a report of a house fire on River Ends Drive.
Assistant Fire Chief Scott Barthelmass said while responding, crews were told the structure had exploded and there could be persons trapped in the collapsed home.
"We did spend until about 4:30 [Saturday] morning with our crews and mutual aid crews and going through and literally taking part the collapse debris and looking for void spaces in that there," he said.
Barthelmass said three people lived in the home and two were accounted for as of Saturday morning.
"We're very confident that there's no one here, that that person's just unaccounted for," he said.
People on social media, who live in Wildwood, said they felt and heard the explosion miles away.
"That kind of tells you the amount of energy, the amount of blast that occurred here," Barthelmass said.
Middleton Carouthers was one of the many in Jefferson County who felt the impact of the explosion.
"I know it's 4th of July, and I hear this boom. I'm like, wait a minute that made my whole house shaken and I'm like, that was no firecracker. I live, I'm an easy three football fields away," he said.
The cause of the fire and explosion remains under investigation, according to Barthelmass.
"You can speculate many things, you can pick on many things, but let the evidence and let the scene speak for itself," he said.
Barthelmass said he's thankful no one was injured and he's proud of his crews' response.
"We train for the worst case, right? This one, I would say, was the worst case but our crews were exceptional and our mutual aid partners were exceptional," he said.
The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and the Missouri State Fire Marshall's Office are handling the investigation. They are looking at several different causes and it could take weeks to figure out what happened, according to Barthelmass.
This is a developing story. 5 On Your Side will update as information becomes available.
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