Man suffers serious burns after explosion in Round Rock business
A man suffered serious burns after an explosion in Round Rock business Friday afternoon. Fire Marshal's said they responded to the incident just after 2 pm.
Kristopher Underwood works just a couple buildings over from "Energetic Materials and Products" on Brandi Lane in Round Rock. He said he stepped outside to see what all the commotion was about when he saw black smoke coming from the building and emergency responders rushing to the scene. "It was a typical day at work, and we noticed there are a lot of sirens going and lights flashing. The police actually came in and actually asked us to exit the building due to high explosives that were in the building ,they were really worried about that. They did want us to initially stay across the street as far back as possible."
Round Rock Fire Marshal’s said two employees were working at the company that makes breaching tools with chargers, when something went wrong and one exploded, "The breaching tool is something that a cop or military would breach a door to get in a building. Everything is separate right now, and when they are actually manufactured in there is when they are bringing stuff together and that’s when it’s critical," said Dennis Kincheloe, the Fire Marshal for Round Rock.
The explosion was so powerful, most of the bricks on the front side of the building were shaken off in the blast and a small fire broke out. One of the employees suffered serious burns and was taken by helicopter to a hospital in San Antonio, the other was not injured.
The Round Rock Fire Marshal’s Office, Round Rock Police, and ATF agents spent several hours into the night piecing together the events leading up to the explosion, "It just takes a lot of time with an investigation, you kind of put things back together to see what happened," Kincheloe said.
For everyone else on Brandi Lane, it was back to business as usual. "Just a crazy Friday. I was waiting for something to actually happen with all the activity, but it sounds like it was quickly taken care of and we were able to just go about our day pretty quickly afterwards," Underwood said.