Couple feels lucky to have escaped blast

Even though they lost their home to a powerful natural-gas explosion over the weekend, Art and Diane Wright feel very fortunate for the serendipitous circumstances that allowed them to escape harm.

At around noon Saturday, the explosion rocked the south-side Kalispell neighborhood around the house on Coot Court. The blast blew off the roof at the rear of the structure and buckled walls and the garage door. Insulation showered down on the roofs of surrounding homes.

Art Wright was out hunting. Diane Wright was at the grocery store, an unplanned stop at the end of a morning of errands.

“I was on my way home from the grocery store and I got a phone call from the neighbor. He said your house just blew up,” she recalls. “I just started shaking and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to start because it’s such an overwhelming feeling.”

While it has yet to be confirmed, the suspected cause of the gas leak is incredibly improbable.

That morning at about 5:45 a.m., Art Wright was getting familiar with a new rifle when he accidentally fired it into the floor of the home, possibly rupturing a gas line.

“We don’t know that for sure. Until they do the investigation and find the pipe, which is buried right now, we can’t say definitely that a bullet punctured it,” Kalispell Fire Chief Dave Dedman said Monday. “Oh yeah, it’s a possibility. We deal a lot with peoples’ bad luck. Statistically, it’s a one-in-a-million shot if that’s the case.”

After her husband left Saturday morning for a day of hunting, Diane Wright could smell something in the house. “There was an odor, but I thought it was from the gun,” she said.

She took a shower and that kicked on the hot water heater, which she believes could have been an ignition source for gas in the air. She also marvels that a bullet striking a gas line didn’t cause an explosion.

But she’s certain that her stop at the grocery store saved her.

“If I had been home instead of going to the grocery store, I would have opened the door,” she said, adding that she was advised by a firefighter that could have been fatal.

“If she had turned a light switch on, it could have been a whole different story,” Dedman said.

“That’s the closest I’ve come to being killed three times in one day,” Diane Wright said.

Driving toward home after the alarming phone call, Wright said she could see the billowing column of black smoke coming from her neighborhood.

“I knew it was bad,” she said.

Stunned neighbors who were watching the burning home were worried that her husband was still there because his pickup truck was parked outside.

Art Wright learned about the explosion later that day.

“I was on my way home from hunting when my daughter called and said, ‘Your house blew up,’” he recalls. “I said, ‘What?’ I couldn’t believe it. The first thing I asked was, ‘Where’s Mom?’ That was my main concern.”

The aftermath has been difficult, but sprinkled with some fortune.

Tools were recovered from the garage “and some of my jewelry blew up onto the roof of a neighbor’s house, oddly enough, so we were able to get that,” Diane Wright said.

She spent the next couple of days replacing her husband’s medication and buying some basics. “Now we’re trying to think more long term,” she said.

The Wrights have found a place to stay for now.

The Wrights say they feel very fortunate that neighbors they don’t even know let them house-sit in their home while the homeowners are out of state.

“I could find a place to rent, but I don’t have anything to take there,” she said. “We did set up an account (for donations) at Parkside Credit Union, because people keep asking about that. I don’t know what we need yet.”

Those interested in donating can deposit in an account at the credit union under the names “Art and Diane Wright.”

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by email at jmann@dailyinterlake.com.