Police and firefighters were still trying to figure out why a Champaign house exploded and caught fire on Sunday, after crews rushed to the 2700 block of Judith Drive around noon and found a neighborhood scene lined with emergency vehicles and Ameren Natural Gas trucks.
No one was injured, and that was the first relief in a blast that drew attention across the street and down the block. Cynthia Brockman, who lives across from the house, said two hours later that she was still a little rattled.
The reason the fireball started was still unknown. That mattered because the home was believed to be empty at the time, with neighbors and the family of the man who owned it saying no one was inside, and the resident believed to be living in a nursing home.
That belief narrowed the list of immediate dangers, but it did not answer the central question. Fire crews had the building, the gas service and the wreckage in front of them, yet the cause of the explosion had not been determined, leaving investigators to work backward from damage, utility response and whatever was left of the structure.
For Brockman, the event was not an abstract emergency. It was the kind of blast that shakes a street, calls every nearby neighbor outside and lingers long after the smoke thins. The investigation now has a single job: determine what turned an ordinary Sunday around noon into an explosion in Champaign.
