Cause of fire/explosion under investigation:

Four dead in south-central Iowa house fire: neighbors reported explosions MOUNT AYR, Iowa (AP)  A man and three children were found dead after fire swept through their rural south-central Iowa home Sunday morning, officials said.

Investigators said the fire may have resulted from an explosion.

Autopsies were planned to determine what killed Richard Dean McNear, 46, and his children Brian, 13, Shawn, 10, and Misty, 5. A Ringgold County dispatcher said the fire was reported about 6:30 a.m. Neighbors reported hearing two explosions. The fire scorched a minivan parked near the home and burned most of the two-story wood-frame house on the edge of Mount Ayr, a community of fewer than 1,800 people, 12 miles north of the Missouri border. McNear's wife, a nurses' aide, was at work at the time, according a spokeswoman for the nursing home where she and her husband, a maintenance worker, were employed.

Link to story:

http://www.foxnews.com/national/0116/d_ap_0116_49.sml

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), January 16, 2000

Answers

natural gas?

-- Moore dinty Moore (dac@ccrtc.com), January 16, 2000.

TWO explosions?????

hmmmmmmmmmm........

Night train

-- puzzlin THIS footballer (nighttr@in.lane), January 16, 2000.

god bless them. can you imagine the mother's heartbreak at losing all of her family. i don't know how she will survive. pray for her.

-- tt (cuddluppy@aol.com), January 16, 2000.

Horrible news. Now, the kerosene or propane heaters cause fires, do they create this degree of explosion as well?

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 16, 2000.

A parked mini van "nearby" ? Folks, do you realize how big of an explosion this had to be to toast a "nearby" vehicle? Propane tanks, just dont cut it. Stored gasoline tanks just dont cut it either.

We are missing something in these reports..... these rashes of explosions and such. I dont subscribe to the conspiracy theory, but let me ask you this simple question, which would explain the "never seen the likes of it before"

Do any of these fire investigators have any experience in what a blast caused by a rocket or a missle looks like?

Can you explain it?

Maybe I do believe in the conspiracy theory. How close are military bases to these rash of fires?

Would be interesting to do some research on, if I could only find the time.

-- Electman (vrepair1@tampabay.rr.com), January 17, 2000.

Mt. Ayr is 2 hrs east of Omaha, where Offut Air Force Base is (SAC Command). I doubt that it was a missile though. A propane gas leak CAN cause this type of explosion. There was one in a town further east like that.

-- justme (none@this.com), January 17, 2000.

Could this be yet another example of an attack on USA by Fiji?

-- Mavis Beatrix (maybeatr@roll.con), January 17, 2000.