SUSQUEHANNA COUNTY, Pa. — It was a normal Thursday morning for Kerry Yankowy of Forest City, when out of nowhere his house began to shake.
"I was standing out there in the kitchen at the counter and just making a salad, said Yankowy. "And all of a sudden I heard and felt this explosion."
When everything had settled Yankowy made his way to the front of his house to try and piece together what happened.
"I was kind of shell shocked for a few seconds and then immediately i came to the front window to look out cause it sounded like it was out on the front roads here, said Yankowy"
The Forest City Police Department said several calls of an explosion were called in from the 800 block of Susquehanna street.
George Ippolito was one of those callers.
"I saw my neighbor across the street out on the porch she was looking everybody was looking nobody could see anything but it was it felt like when I heard it it just shook the whole house," said Ippolito.
Reports of the boom came from several counties, mainly Lackawanna, Susquehanna, and parts of Wayne County.
This led to an investigation by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection who in a press release said,
"The Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation inspected construction sites in the area and interviewed personnel on those sites. They also inspected mining permits in the area, a power line project, pipeline project, and some smaller construction sites. The investigation found no evidence of controlled blasting pertaining to mining or construction. The department also contacted blasting contractors that work in the area and confirmed that they had not conducted any blasting activities."
With no definite answer, Forest City resident Donna Marz can only speculate what may have caused the boom heard around the valley.
"This whole valley up here is coal mine territory so I mean if gas is built up something exploded it would be nice to have an answer, said Marz."
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