Investigation into Plum house explosion could take years, officials say

It could take years to determine a cause of the deadly house explosion in Plum’s Rustic Ridge neighborhood, officials said Tuesday.

“These can be very, very lengthy investigative processes,” said Matthew Brown, chief of Allegheny County’s Department of Emergency Services. “The key is to actually, definitively, get to what the cause is. We’ve got the origin. We’ve got to determine the cause. We need to be able, through the investigative process, to cancel out each of these potentials and only have the focus on one and be able to provide proof of why that’s the one that’s left. That’s the process, and that’s why it takes so long.”

The investigation remains focused inside the home, including on the hot water tank, Brown said. Other appliances also are being examined, he said.

The news conference, which offered few answers for those in the Plum community, came the day after the one-year anniversary of the explosion that claimed six lives.

There is no time frame for when the investigation could conclude, Brown said. The county Fire Marshal’s Office is leading the probe.

Citing a report from the state Public Utility Commission and other findings, all outside causes, including natural gas lines, wells and methane from mines, have been ruled out, leaving investigators to focus on the interior of Paul and Heather Oravitz’s home as the origin of the blast.

“Our area of focus is that home,” Brown said.

Brown said he wants to be able to tell the families and the neighborhood what caused the explosion, but that it could go unknown remains a possibility.

“We will go to every exhaustive length for it not to be,” he said. “That is our key focus. There’s no easy out for us, and undetermined is never an easy out.”

Brown said the county has kept Plum officials and representatives of the Rustic Ridge community informed of their progress.

Plum Mayor Harry Schlegel said county officials have been in touch with borough administrators on at least a monthly basis. While he’s satisfied with the frequency of communications, he’s not as happy with what they’re being told.

“I think with today’s technology, it shouldn’t take years. I know they have to be thorough and they have other things to investigate. Houses don’t just blow up,” Schlegel said. “My only complaint is the time. People want answers.”

Representatives of 48 parties with an interest in the investigation — including investigators, engineers, attorneys and other experts — were meeting Tuesday to discuss how evidence will be examined.

“We have all of the evidence related to this incident,” Brown said. “The process of developing a protocol to evaluate each of those elements of evidence has to involve all of those entities. Coordinating a date and a time for all of them to meet can be pretty lengthy.”

The hot water tank in the Oravitz home is one of, but not the only, appliance investigators are looking at, Brown said. The Oravitzes and four others — Michael Thomas, Kevin Sebunia and Casey and Keegan Clontz — were in the basement of the Oravitz home and died.

The hot water tank was cited early on as a focus of the investigation.

“It is clearly on our list,” he said. “It’s one of many appliances. I don’t know that it’s targeted any more than the others. That is the process of the investigation. We cannot proceed with blinders on. We’ve got to be very focused on everything that has the potential until we can discount it.”

Brown could not specify what other appliances in the home might have been involved in the explosion or what might have triggered it.

“We could potentially have a gas environment, but then what sparked that, what caused that?” he said. “When you’re talking about appliances, it’s not just gas. Something had to ignite as well. We’ve got to look at everything. What were the conditions of the electricity related to those appliances or the electricity related to anything within that home related to the gas appliances?”

Some of the home’s appliances were so severely damaged by the explosion and fire that further testing needs to be done, Brown said.