LOS ANGELES, May 26 (UPI) -- Arson investigators confirmed Saturday that the fiery explosion that ripped through a Los Angeles apartment building was sparked by leaking natural gas and an untimely lit cigarette, and was not the opening volley of a new terrorist attack on the United States.
Friday's explosion injured three people, including a badly burned man who has since told investigators that it was he who triggered the blast when he lit a cigarette after inadvertently leaving a gas line open while he was fixing his stove.
"He had disconnected the gas line and walked away to do something else," Fire Capt. Joe Castro told reporters at the scene of the fire in Encino. "He came back and lit a cigarette."
A woman told reporters Friday that she had found the dazed man, 47-yar-old Dennis Cohen, stumbling along the smoke-filled street after the explosion apparently blew him out of his second-story apartment.
Castro said Cohen's revelations led them to the rubble of his apartment where they found the disconnected gas line, which had been largely melted by the intense heat, and checked the shutoff valve.
"We've ascertained that it was open," Castro said.
The explosion in the venerable San Fernando Valley suburb, which has a sizable Jewish population, raised early concerns that terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden had bombed the building. Recent warnings from federal officials contended that Bin Laden's al Qaida network had considered renting apartments in the United States, filling them with explosives, and blowing up the entire building.
No such attacks have occurred, but landlords across the nation have been urged to be alert for suspicious activities or persons in their buildings.
FBI agents and bomb squad members were dispatched to the scene minutes after the blasts occurred, however investigators concluded by the end of the day that there was no bomb involved in the explosion that caused a debris field of several blocks around the leveled building that passersby said looked like a war zone.
Meanwhile, some 300 residents of the neighborhood were still homeless on Saturday due to the damage to the buildings surrounding the scene of the blast. Firefighters escorted residents to their destroyed homes one-by-one so they could salvage whatever they could carry with them.
"Everything I own is gone," Michael Pollack, a resident of one of the 10 units that was destroyed, lamented to KCAL television. "All I had left was the clothes on my back and whatever I have in my car. Everything else is history."
