LIVE: What we know about Monday's gas explosion in Fort Worth

Yeah, obviously we are staying on top of the breaking news in Fort Worth, where there has been a explosion downtown. This just happened in the past hour or so at the Sandman Hotel on Houston Street. There are large pieces of debris on the street, and we have seen first responders taking victims from the scene. In fact, we just got that update from Fort Worth Fire. Nine people total were taken to local hospitals. 11 people were injured, one of them critical, two of them in serious condition. Yeah, I think one of the things that we really took away from that news conference was that they are still going door-to-door. This is about a 20-story building, so he was asked about the structural integrity of the building, but he said before we get to that, we have got to make sure that when we pull out of here, we have accounted for each and every person that was in that building, so they're still going door-to-door. Yeah, still going through search and rescue. Adriana De Alba has been on the scene for the better part of the last 20 minutes. Adriana, we know that they'll continue to give us updates, but bring us up to speed with the very latest. Right, Izzy. Well, what we're hearing is that this was just a very active scene. It's still active, as you can see, but they are, like you said, going door-to-door, still evacuating. That press conference is still happening right now. The biggest thing we've learned is that this fire department is saying that it looks like it was a gas leak based on their investigation. That is not fully confirmed yet, so Fort Worth Fire is saying it looks like a gas leak. They're working to confirm that for sure, but there were also reports from nearby business owners who said that they smelled gas. Now, the fire department right now just clarified that to say, you know, if you smell gas, it's unclear right now if that was from the explosion or if the gas is what caused the explosion, so just a lot of questions still here that we're working to answer, but what we do know, 11 patients taken to area hospitals. Arlington is offering backup. There are multiple agencies out here. We learned that of those patients, one of them is critical, two with serious injuries, and right now, the biggest mission that officers and fire department personnel have right now is to make sure that everybody in that building is out. They're also working to evacuate surrounding businesses because they don't really know the scope of this right now. Another thing that we learned because what I had heard from a restaurant owner across the street was that it seemed that the explosion came from the restaurant inside of the Sandman Hotel. Well, Fort Worth Fire just said to us right now that they did. They did. It did look like that explosion happened at the restaurant. They said that there were reports of construction happening at the restaurant, and so this is all still, you know, being investigated, but it does sound like this originated from the restaurant, so we will be here with any updates. We expect to get updates every 15 minutes. In the meantime, we're told that there is a reunification center for families in Sundown Square, and that's where we find our Matt Howerton, who is there. What are you hearing, Matt? Yeah, Adriana, this is a place for anybody who has someone staying at that hotel. Maybe they're missing. Maybe they haven't found them or accounted them to come here and talk to police. This is at 200 Fifth Street, actually, and police. There's some of them actually in this this parking lot behind me. They're asking anyone with family related to this incident who might have been wounded or taken to the hospital or someone who they can't account for to come here to get information if they can. We don't see a whole lot of activity in this area, at least we haven't in the last 20 minutes. It's mainly just tourists walking around downtown Fort Worth, but this is the area. If you need to come here, there's police here to help you out. Again, it's Fifth Street, 200 Fifth Street. This is the parking lot area for Sundance Square, so don't go directly to Sundance Square. Come right here. It's just right across the CVS pharmacy here in downtown Fort Worth. But at the same time, a lot of people here downtown, a lot of police cars. It's going to be a little bit of a backup to just getting down to this area as everyone tries to figure all of this out. Back to you on the studio. All right. Thank you, Matt. So again, if you're just joining us, this incident, this apparent explosion did happen at around 3 30 this afternoon at the Sandman Hotel. This is along 8th between Houston and Throckmorton. This is in the heart of downtown Fort Worth. There you see firefighters taking a one of 11 people injured away and placing them in an ambulance and taking them to a local hospital. Yeah, this you know, if you're not familiar with downtown Fort Worth, this is about a two minute walk from the convention center. Another two minute walk the other direction to Sundance Square. One of the things that I noticed from the earlier video, this was probably about maybe about 20 minutes ago or so. It was some of the first responders looking down into the building and you could see that part of the floor had given way because they were looking down into just blackness. There was no floor there, although it was part of the building. Making sure that everyone is out of that building after this explosion this afternoon, again, 11 people injured. We know one of them is in critical condition, two other in serious condition. And again, a family reunification center has been established at Sundance in downtown Fort Worth at Sundance Square. Yeah, let's get out to Cole Sullivan. He's got another perspective on his call. You're at your GPS here at the scene, actually, Chris, right now. And you can just see what we're seeing from where we are. There could still see some a lot of police presence here. Officers from Fort Worth PD, obviously fire department firefighters as well. They've got their mobile command unit here on scene as well. We'll keep updating you and bring you back more information shortly. All right, Cole Sullivan live there on the scene, along with Adriana de Alba. Another thing of note, we do know that Atmos is also on scene to turn off gas in the building and surrounding areas as they conduct an investigation as to what could have caused this explosion at the Sandman Hotel this afternoon. Yeah, this this hotel is in the Wagoner building. It was it was built back in 1920. It's on the National Register of Historic Places. It was restored in 1985. But it was built with a two story marble base and then on top of that, a white brick in the middle. So if you know anything about architecture, you know, from the early 20th century, you know, these buildings were built to last a lifetime. So that may be a contributing factor in terms of looking at the structural integrity of the building right now. And people in nearby buildings, at least one person told Adriana de Alba, a person who's across the street who knows this area well, this building well, that they heard that loud boom come from the restaurant area of the Sandman Hotel. But of course, that has not been confirmed. We also heard witnesses tell our Jason Wheeler during our coverage, during our four o'clock newscast, that they heard a loud boom. These are people blocks and blocks away, Chris, who heard this boom at around three thirty this afternoon. And one of them told Jason his building shook, even though he wasn't in that building. I want to bring in our investigative reporter, Tanya Iser, to give us a little more content and context and perspective on what's happened here today. Well, Chris, I've talked to a couple of experts about this, and they're both saying this does have all the hallmarks of a gas explosion. And I would expect that we will see the Texas Railroad Commission, which investigates these kinds of things, on the scene in the coming hours. That was one of the changes that came as a result of the explosions we saw in northwest Dallas a few years ago, that they are now required to respond much quicker. We've reached out to them to try to find out when they will be on the scene. I thought it was very interesting also that they mentioned that there was construction going on inside this restaurant. What we've seen in prior explosions is that oftentimes they do involve some sort of construction going on. And I also think it's we're going to want to know if if it does prove to be a gas explosion, is this going to be something on the atmos side or is this going to be something on related to what was going on inside that restaurant? There's going to be just a lot of questions and things that are going to have to be answered. Tanya, there are so many things that you can tell simply with the naked eye. Did these experts you spoke with indicate anything that they can see right away just from what they're seeing on TV of what might have happened here? Well, what they can say is that just looking at it, this absolutely looks like a gas explosion. And that's what just on the surface, you know, a gas explosion, you know, that gas builds up and then you have this this intense heat. And sometimes that'll be followed by an actual fire. But it looks like this was just more of, you know, an explosion type thing. And we're going to want to know a lot more about, you know, where was the if this does become a gas explosion, where was the leak? What caused the leak? And those are all the things that the Railroad Commission is going to be looking at. And presumably the fire department is going to be pretty involved in this. I know when we had those gas explosions in northwest Dallas, the Dallas Dallas Fire Rescue was very involved in looking at what happened, why it happened, and to try to find out the cause and try to prevent it from happening again. Having covered, you know, gas explosions in the past, having, you know, spoken with Atmos and and researched this and left, what sort of timeline does that fall under when you talk about trying to pinpoint a cause and what happened in some of those specifics? How long does that take on average? Well, I think we'll have a preliminary cause pretty quickly, but it'll take a bit, maybe months before we'll know more specifics about what actually caused it. You know, like what was, you know, because they'll have to pull that equipment out there. They'll have to inspect it and really try to figure out and pinpoint what happened. But like I said, my my ears really perked up when I heard that fire chief mentioned that there had been construction inside that restaurant, because oftentimes we do see these explosions involving natural gas when there's some sort of construction going on and a gas line gets nicked and something happens. And then we see something along this line. Fortunately, Tanya, so far today, this does not appear to be a deadly explosion. Our thanks to you and your expertise. Our coverage continues on the other side of a break of this hotel explosion in downtown Fort Worth. Eleven injured, but no fatalities. We'll be right back.