Nearly five months after a natural-gas explosion leveled a house
at 1411 Granite Ave., the neighborhood around the site was jumping
this week.

Just uphill of Gary Woltermann’s destroyed house, a crew of
carpenters was swarming over what will be the new home of Harrison
and Darlene Fagg. Their old house seemed to be salvageable
immediately after the blast but was later determined to be beyond
repair.

Two different crews were making extensive repairs to nearby
houses that were badly damaged by the blast on the morning of June
8.

The site of Woltermann’s two-story house has been stripped down
to bare dirt. Ditto with the property just across the street, once
the home of Blake and Martha Mitchell, and the property just west
of Woltermann’s, once the home of Dorothy Larango.

The house just east of Woltermann’s, belonging to Mary Kraske,
will be demolished in the spring, bringing to five the number of
houses destroyed by the explosion.

But the amazing thing is that, despite the huge property losses,
no one was killed or seriously injured.

“It’s really just a big miracle that nobody got hurt,” said city
Fire Marshal Mike Spini. “Somebody was watching over them.”

Woltermann, the mayor of Columbus who had long kept a second
home in Billings, had left his house on Granite Avenue to attend a
funeral half an hour before the explosion occurred about 10:30
a.m.

Coincidentally, the Faggs left their house minutes before the
blast, heading for the same funeral Woltermann was attending.

Spini compiled the final report on the incident, drawing on
investigations done by the fire and police departments, the
Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Office and the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Spini concluded that the explosion was caused by a buildup of
natural gas in Woltermann’s house. The gas came from a
Montana-Dakota Utilities service line that fed into Woltermann’s
residence and ruptured near the southeast corner of the foundation
of his house.

Investigators never did determine exactly what ignited the gas,
but as Spini wrote in the report, “The house contained a number of
feasible ignition sources including the natural gas-operated water
heater and furnace in the basement.”

The gas may have been building up for a while. In the report,
Spini said he spoke with a neighborhood resident, Penny Ronning,
who walked her dog on Granite Avenue every day.

She told him she smelled a chemical odor in the vicinity of 1440
Granite on a daily basis as long ago as March. She said didn’t
report the smell because she didn’t know what it was. On June 5,
she said, she smelled “a second wave of the odor” across the street
from 1411 Granite. She said it was a “pungent chemical odor.”

In addition to the houses that were destroyed, numerous other
houses and buildings sustained some damage, mostly broken windows.
Some windows were even broken on the campus of Rocky Mountain
College, about 1,200 feet south of the explosion.

The day after the explosion, Spini said total damage could
easily top $1 million.

He said he still doesn’t know what the damage total is, but “the
final numbers are a lot more than we have here,” in the report.

The figures in the report were based on early estimates. For
instance, in the report, the Fagg house was thought to have
sustained damage totaling only $50,000, before it was declared a
total loss.

Spini said Jennifer Sturm, an adjuster with Farmers Insurance,
which is Woltermann’s insurer, might have more accurate estimates,
but she was not available for comment Friday.

Woltermann said he was still trying to settle with his insurer
and thought he might finally be able to do so by the end of the
year.

All he had received from Farmers so far was $11,000 for cleaning
up his property – an undertaking that actually cost him
$37,000.

“So we’ve got a little bit of difference there,” he said.

Woltermann said the most aggravating thing was being barred from
entering his property for two months while MDU continued its
investigation into the blast.

He knew there wasn’t much to be salvaged from the site, but
“anything I could have saved was ruined by the rain. … What I was
able to save I could have brought home in a trash bag.”

The Faggs were not available Friday, but their son, District
Judge Russell Fagg, said the concussion of the blast basically
lifted the house up and set it down again on the foundation.
Everything was out of kilter.

“Some strange things happened,” Russell Fagg said. At the rear
of the house, there were four windows in a row. All were blown out,
but two shattered out and two shattered into the house.

He said his parents bought a condo and will live there until
their new house is finished, perhaps as early as next spring. His
father, an architect, designed the original house, Russell Fagg
said, and the new one will be similar, with just a few tweaks to
the design.

Woltermann’s neighbor to the west, Larango, has bought a
townhome and is living on Avenue F. She said she had her home
demolished two weeks ago and has a buyer for the property.

She said she has been happy with her insurer. She has a
Travelers policy handled by Peter Yegen Jr.

Kraske, whose house still stands just east of Woltermann’s
property, said she hasn’t demolished her house yet only because she
lacks a retaining wall and doesn’t want dirt and mud flowing over
her lot and into the neighbors’ yards.

She is hoping to demolish her house and start building a new one
next spring.

“My insurance (Farmers) has been quite good, I would say, under
the circumstances,” she said.

Blake Mitchell said he and his wife are renting a place on the
West End and have been working up some plans to build a new house
at 1412 Granite Ave.

He said they didn’t salvage “a whole lot” and are still buying
clothing and household goods.

The only person reported to have been injured in the explosion
was Nick Kuppinger, a teenage employee of Billings Pool and Spa,
who was cleaning the Faggs’ pool. He was bowled over by the blast
and had his hair and sideburns singed.

Woltermann, meanwhile, said that while he still gets depressed
and frustrated over his long ordeal, he tries to keep things in
perspective.

He said he tells himself, “Come on, Gary, it’s just stuff.
Nobody got hurt.”