Staff photo / Ed Runyan Girard city firefighters, pictured in the background, attack a house fire Wednesday morning on North Main Street.

GIRARD — The young man who lives in the house on North Main Street in Girard that blew up and caught fire this morning said he and his girlfriend were not there when the explosion happened, but two dogs and their cats were.

The dogs were rescued, but the couple does not know where the cats he, they told The Vindicator this morning, an hour or so after the explosion.

He feels pretty sure that the house, which was their home for a little less than a year, is destroyed. Firefighters were still applying water to the front of the house about an hour after the explosion, which the man said apparently happened sometime before 10:20 a.m.

News reports indicate that first responders were called to the area for a gas leak when the explosion happened, injuring a police officer and a firefighter, who were taken to the hospital as a precaution.

Down the street, the man said a crew was working near their home starting this morning to lay fiber optic cable. He said he thinks the crew must have hit the gas line.