CARDIFF, Idaho — Investigators located two bodies while searching the rubble of a remote gas station in north-central Idaho that burst into flames Wednesday in a violent explosion.
The explosion on Wednesday afternoon while a semitruck with two fuel tank trailers was at the station sent at least two people to hospitals, according to officials. It also destroyed a house next door.
Two other people were airlifted to burn units in Spokane and Seattle, Idaho State Fire Mashall Knute Sandahl said Thursday. Further details about the people who died or were injured were not released Friday morning.
Bruce Schulz, owner of the destroyed home, was visiting relatives in a nearby town when it happened. Because the road was closed, he didn't return until Friday morning, when he first saw the wreckage of his home.
The shell of one of the gas station's fuel tanks was lying in his back yard, about one hundred yards from where it should have been.
"Terrible tragedy," Schulz said. "I'm heartbroken. My heart is with the people that were hurt, and their families."
Two cabins he owns behind the house and his Quonset hut workshop survived.
Investigators from various state and federal agencies continued sorting through the gas station wreckage Friday.
"It is still way too early to even speculate the cause of this tragic event," said Idaho State Fire Marshal Knute Sandahl in a news release. "Piecing together the events leading up to the explosion and fire could take several weeks. We must be methodical and thorough."
A chassis and exhaust pipe were most of what remained of the semitruck and its two fuel tank trailers. The truck was parked along four old fashioned self-serve fuel pumps.
The cinderblock convenience store was in crumbles. Bombed-out frames of a small excavator, two pickup trucks and another vehicle were also in the parking lot.
About five more above-ground fuel tanks, like the one found in Schulz's yard, were scattered in the back of the gas station property. Over a dozen oil barrels were scattered on the side.
The gas station was the only business in the tiny unincorporated community of a few dozen buildings on state Highway 11. The road continues to Montana, but eventually turns into a dirt road.
With few year-round residents, most of the gas station's traffic was from loggers and outdoorsmen, Schulz said.
The station's stockpile of motor oils serviced various logging equipment, said Jeff Fleming, the neighbor on the other side of the station. His wife, Kathy, was home when the explosion happened.
"It rattled me a moment," Kathy Fleming said. "I froze and thought, OK, what do I do? Then I sprung into action."
She called 911, called her husband at work, then evacuated her six dogs to the top of the hill up the road, where she waited for about five hours.
Jeff and Kathy figure their house was saved because the wind was blowing the other direction.
Rosemary Gibbs, who lives a few houses down, said the boom from the explosion rattled the walls and didn't sound like thunder. She knew it must be the gas station. Her friend and housemate Vernon Morris got out the hose and put out sparks approaching his neighbor's shed. The heat was too intense to get any closer, he said.
Morris grew up in Cardiff and recalls the gas station was built around 1960, shortly after he graduated high school.
Gibbs and Morris said the two people who were rescued are the gas station's clerk and the fuel truck driver. The two who were killed were loggers who were regular customers, they said.
The gas station was a local meeting place, Gibbs said, where people liked to chat with the clerk.
Ronnie Anderson stopped across the street in his pickup Friday afternoon to pay his respects to an old friend who he said didn't make it out of the fire. Anderson said the friend was a logger who stopped there every day after work.
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