Nearly a year has passed since an explosion leveled a caretaker’s house on John Tippins’ sprawling Sewickley Heights property.
But, as the managing director of a Downtown-based private equity group gets ready to rebuild on the Backbone Road site, at least one neighbor still is wondering what happened to the worker who miraculously survived the blast.
Rich Engler said he hurried to Tippins’ 7,093-square-foot mansion after his own house was rattled by “a blast you’d only see in a war” shortly after 5 p.m. on Dec. 12, 2023.
There, around dusk, Engler and Tippins found an HVAC technician wandering through the smoke where Tippins’ caretaker’s house once stood.
“He was burnt to a crisp from his hands to his biceps — but everything else was fine,” said Engler, 78, a local music producer who’s lived among the borough’s massive estates and rolling hills for 40 years.
“It all happened pretty quick,” he added. “There were so many ambulances and so many fire companies there that night.”
Engler drove his car that afternoon to Tippins’ home — about 40 acres away from his own property. Engler remembered thinking that, when he arrived, he smelled smoke but no natural gas near what was left of the former caretaker’s house.
“Is anybody here?” he shouted repeatedly. “Is anybody here?”
Then, a “faint, distant voice” called out: “Help me!”
“How in the world did you make it out alive?” Engler blurted out.
“I don’t know,” the man replied, clearly in shock.
First responders rushed the man to an area hospital.
The length of his stay remains unknown, as do the extent of his injuries. Authorities never identified the man or filed any criminal charges in the case.
The man’s employer — J.A. Sauer, Co. Heating & Company, which is based in Ross — did not return numerous phone calls or emails seeking comment.
The Allegheny County Fire Marshal has deemed the explosion that afternoon an accident.
“(It was) related to the service work being done at the time — nothing suspicious,” said Kasey Reigner, a spokeswoman for the county Department of Emergency Services.
Aleppo Fire Chief William Davis, Jr., whose firefighters responded to the explosion last year on Backbone Road, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
What specifically caused the blast is less clear, Tippins recently told TribLive.
Tippins, who lives with his wife in the brick-faced home, discovered natural gas pipes leading to the caretaker’s house — they called it “the baby house” — were old when a contractor was digging nearby months before the explosion to help install a hot tub.
So, Tippins said he hired a contractor to install a new gas line.
Later, he said he hired J.A. Sauer to complete the work and light the furnace.
Tippins doesn’t know what triggered the blast — or how the contractor is doing 12 months later.
“Luckily, he survived,” said Tippins, 64.
After the blast had smoldered, workers came to excavate the remains of the caretaker’s house’s foundation, Tippins said.
Next, the Sewickley Heights homeowner hopes to build a new cottage there that will be more in line with the design and tone of the main house, which he said was constructed around 1938.
“We hope to break ground in the spring if we can get our ducks in a row,” he said.
Tippins’ plans to rebuild the cottage are under review by the borough’s Historical Architectural Review Board, borough manager Nate Briggs said. Officials did not respond to inquiries to view the proposed plans.
HARB reviews all planned development in Sewickley Heights because the borough strives to maintain certain historic details on its properties, Briggs said.
It is the only borough in Pennsylvania designated entirely as an historic district.