Couple Tell Harrowing Tale of Explosion

Bill and Dotty Yanett were watching Blue Blood on television Wednesday night, when the serenity of their evening was shattered by an explosion  seven doors down on 13th Street in Allentown. 

Windows blew out, dressers went crashing, pictures flew off the walls. 

"It was surreal....like you were at war," said Dotty Yanett, as she sought refuge Thursday morning at a hotel in South Whitehall.

Three people, including a four-month-old,  have been confirmed dead in the explosion. Two people are still missing, authorities said.

Bill Yanett, retired from his job as a bodyguard for Mack Trucks presidents, rushed to his back door to head outside. Had his roof collapsed from the weight of the snow? But the back door was jammed; he couldn't get out of his house. 

He ran to the front of the house and got outside. His wife, in her pajamas, stayed back. She ran upstairs, to the room where her great-granddaughter sometimes slept over. Thankfully, her great granddaughter had not spent the night. But the room, "it was all trashed," she said. "I just cried."

Outside now, Bill Yanett could see the flames shooting from 544 13th St., just down the street. He ran to help a neighbor who lived closer to the explosion. With others, he helped to smash a window to get inside. But the police and fire officials were there now and yelling for him to get out "right now."

"These can blow at any time," he said authorities told him.

Bill Yanett needed to get his wife. He rushed back to their home at 532 13th St. She grabbed her coat and shoes -- finding glass inside them from the shattered windows. They left behind everything else, including their medicine and glasses.

Bill Yanett got their car, and spotting two neighbors, he picked them up too so they could all get out of the block. The fire marched toward their homes.

"This was like being in a war zone," said Dotty Yanett. "You didn't know where to go. You didn't know what to do."

Where could they go?

Bill Yanett is an official at Christ Evangelical Church at 22nd and Tilghman streets. Since he had the key, he figured the two couples could head to the church. He called his pastor.

Once at the church, Dotty Yanett rummaged through donated clothes to find pants and a shirt for her neighbor Ed to wear; he had left his house in just his nightclothes and a robe.

The Yanetts and their neighbors eventually went next door to their pastor's home, and they watched televised accounts of the explosion and ensuing fire. Bill Yanett left at one point to go to the American Red Cross staging area at Agricultural Hall at the Allentown fairgrounds, so that officials could know that he and his wife and his two neighbors had gotten out alright.

By 6 a.m., the Yanetts were at the hotel in South Whitehall, where they will stay again tonight, courtesy of the hotel and the American Red Cross. Then, they will seek shelter with their daughter at her boyfriend's home in Quakertown.

"I think the Lord was looking out for us," said Bill Yanett. "The house can be rebuilt...We're thankful neither one of us was hurt."

The Yanetts, who had lived on 13th Street for 30-plus years, remember the 1994 Gross Towers explosion. They had been at a nearby diner when it happened, but they weren't allowed in their home then because it was so close to the scene. They remember the "nightmare" of seeing people injured and evacuating there.

This time, Dotty Yanett said, she won't be going back to 13th Street.