House explosion reaches for blocks in all directions

CLEVELAND - Neighbors spent the morning along side our cameras, snapping pictures of their own. The glass from broken windows crunched under their feet.

Ply wood boards filled window frames and doors torn from the hinges.

Debris covered the street and dangled from tree limbs while heavy machinery swept chunks of roof and siding.

Nearly ever house in sight had noticible damage.

And many houses out of sight.

I met Ruthie Burnside while she clicked away with her digital camera.

She heard and felt the explosion yesterday from her living room.

"It was crazy. Absolutely crazy. The windows blew out in the back. The frames are bent. It hit like a truck."

Ruthie walked us down the street to her two story home. We walked passed one porch, then another, then another. We kept walking. She lives 15 houses from the explosion... more than a block and a half away. And the damage was startling.

"There's a crack down the garage. You can see the light of day down at the bottom. The wood actually broke. A two-by-four. It actually broke on the bottom of the garage."

More than 100 yards from the explosion, Ruthie's garage suffered serious structural damage. She also had busted windows on the back side of her house.

She told me, she's surprised by the force of the blast and the damage to her home. But says, she feels lucky when she looks down her street.

"This could have been a disaster, with people dead. This could have been really bad."