CHEROKEE COUNTY, Ga. — Flames tore through a Cherokee County home after an explosion Friday afternoon.
Authorities said several neighbors heard the loud explosion at the home on Trenton Lane around 1:30 p.m.
NewsChopper 2 flew over the scene shortly after, showing pictures of a smoldering pile of rubble – all that was left of the home. Cellphone video from neighbors shows the home engulfed in flames.
Channel 2's Chris Jose rushed to the scene and spoke with a neighbor who helped save the woman who lives inside the home.
Joe Whitehead said he thought a bomb went off in the neighborhood when the explosion shook his house.
"I saw the whole side of the house collapsed, it had exploded," he said. "I thought it was a bomb that went off. Literally. What in the world was that?"
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Whitehead lives a few homes down and was one of the men who ran toward the house to help rescue the woman inside.
He told Jose that he couldn’t get in the front door, so he ran toward the back. He and another man pulled the woman out.
"I tried to go through the front, but it was so collapsed, I felt like I wouldn’t be able to make it to her before the flames moved that way," Whitehead said. “She was in the kitchen, actually. I heard her. I was yelling, trying to get anybody’s attention who may have been inside and I heard her screaming for help.”
Firefighters said the elderly woman suffered some burns and a broken hip, but she refused to go to the hospital.
"We struggled to get her away from the house, because the heat was building so quickly. We thought there was gonna be another explosion," Whitehead said.
Investigators are trying to determine what caused the explosion.