In wake of explosion, students find place in campus housing

Kayla Keddal didn’t know the Central Oakland house she shared with three other students was empty when it exploded.

Keddal received a call last Thursday night from her landlord, who said police had told her there was smoke coming from her house on Dawson Street.

But when Keddal returned from her mother’s house in Peters Township, where she was visiting for Thanksgiving, she did not expect the scene that awaited her when she arrived at her house at about 11 p.m. after firefighters had put out the flames and described the situation as “like something from a horror movie.”

She said the water used to put the fire out was pouring through the ceiling of the first floor. Arson investigators and firefighters moved around inside the charred remains of the structure. From the porch, Keddal saw that her ceiling fan had melted. 

When she first arrived, Keddal did not know that the two students who shared the second floor of the house, where an explosion had ripped apart three walls, had not been inside that evening. She panicked and began crying.

“[Firefighters] had to tell me three times that no one was hurt,” she said.

Michael Burford, an investigator with the Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire, said firefighters had to tear down the building after the fire was extinguished because the explosion had rendered it unsafe. 

Three of the four people who lived in the house that stood at 3376 Dawson St. until Thursday were Pitt students. In addition to Keddal, a Pitt senior who shared the first floor with a Point Park University student, seniors Ally Becker and Ian Quinn shared the second floor. Keddal, Becker and Quinn are now staying in University housing.

John Fedele, a Pitt spokesman, said Panther Central and Pitt’s Office of Student Affairs works with students in situations like this and similar cases to make sure they have places to live when they return to Oakland.

“Our general approach to these types of issues is to provide housing for the remainder of the semester, and we will make it available for spring if they can’t find another place to live,” Fedele said in an email.

Fedele said the students will be able to stay in University housing for free until the end of this semester.

“If they decide to stay on campus next semester, they will be charged for their rooms,” he said.

Pitt did the same for the students who were left without a place to live after a fire destroyed their Zulema Street apartment last spring, according to Fedele.

Becker said that a University employee contacted her the day after the blast and told her that Pitt would try to find a room for her in on-campus housing. The employee instructed her to go to Panther Central when she returned to Pittsburgh.

When Becker returned to Oakland on Sunday, a room in Litchfield Tower C was waiting.

Quinn is also staying in Tower C.

Quinn said the University Store on Fifth allowed him to borrow textbooks until the end of the semester to replace those destroyed.

Keddal, who is staying in Lothrop Hall, said Pitt offered her the chance to borrow books from the University Store but that she didn’t need them.

While it will be easy for Becker, Quinn and Keddal to get the textbooks they need as they head into finals, replacing other possessions will be harder. 

Although Becker did not return to Oakland until Sunday, her uncle, who lives in the Pittsburgh area, came by before that to see if he could salvage anything. The uncle, searching through the rubble, retrieved a pair of Doc Martens.

All three said they didn’t have renter’s insurance to help them replace other belongings they lost.

“After this, I’ll be insured for life,” Quinn said.

While tearing down the house made it hard to salvage residents’ remaining possessions, Burford said that it also made the cause of the explosion harder to determine.

Allegheny County records indicate that Realty Management Ltd. in Mt. Lebanon owns the house. The company’s owners were not available for comment.

Burford said that because the explosion left the building unsafe, arson investigators had only a short time to examine the inside of the house before authorities tore it down with an excavator the same night of the explosion and fire.

Burford said the explosion, which tore out the side and back walls, would have made it a hazard to public safety had it remained standing.

Becker and Quinn said they could not think of any reason that there would be an explosion on the second floor.

Quinn ruled out a gas leak as the reason for the explosion because the house’s gas furnace was located in the basement.

[The fire] didn’t start in the basement,” he said.