A 36-year-old man is facing a drug-related charge after an explosion inside a Liberty Village condo unit last night
The incident occurred at a residential building on East Liberty Street shortly after 6:30 p.m., and when firefighters arrived on scene, they found a man inside a sixth floor unit suffering from burns to his hands and face. The man suffered only minor injuries in the explosion, which was so powerful it blew off the door to his apartment. The explosion also blew in the doors of three elevators located directly across from the unit and the apartment door was later located on top of an elevator car four storeys below.
“We were told it was a stove explosion so initially we probably thought it might be natural gas, but it turned out it was chemicals; acetone, other chemicals that appear to be used for making drugs,” Toronto Fire Platoon Chief Kevin Shaw told CP24 Tuesday morning.“It was a pretty substantial explosion that pretty well wrote the entire condo unit off.”
Shaw said if someone had been waiting for the elevators at the time of the blast, they would have been seriously injured or even killed.
Lauren McCaul, a resident of the Liberty Village apartment complex, said the explosion “shook the whole building.”
“I was about to take my dog out for a walk and we just heard this big bang… I went out to our terrace to look and we could see smoke coming out,” she said.“We grabbed our dog and our cat and we evacuated the building as soon as possible.”
Damage from the explosion has been estimated at more than $100,000.
Andre Hagen appeared in court at Old City Hall on Tuesday and was charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking.
