Crew tears down house adjacent to house that exploded in January

On Monday morning, demolition began on a home damaged in the Jan. 4 explosion that destroyed a house at 1114 E. Washington St. in Washington.

A crew from DeLong Construction of Washington began the work tearing down the house at 1120 E. Washington St., the house directly to the east of the home destroyed in the January explosion.

'The insurance company of the property owner deemed it to be inhabitable,” Brendan DeLong, project manager of DeLong Construction. 'We were hired by the property owner to tear it down.”

According to the Washington County Assessor's website, the property is owned by Frana Properties of Washington.

DeLong said that there was a lot of structural damage to the house as a result of the explosion next door.

He said that the work should be wrapped up by late Tuesday.

In the early morning hours of Jan. 4, the Washington County Communications Center received multiple calls of a house explosion at 1114 E. Washington St.

One adult was killed and a child was injured in the explosion that sent debris over a several block area.

Investigators are still working to determine the cause of the explosion, according to DeLong, who is also the Washington fire chief.

'We have another investigation with different engineers on April 8,” DeLong said. 'We're hopeful that, after that inspection, we'll know something about the cause.”

He hopes that the results will be released a couple weeks after that.

DeLong said that they attempted an investigation in February but were unsuccessful.

'The weather conditions didn't allow us to do what we needed to do,” he said.