Deadly explosion in Lexington, Missouri, leaves residents angry: ‘This was preventable!’
Travis and Maria Summers had been smelling the faint and sickly sweet odor of gas around their antebellum home in Lexington, Missouri, for hours on Wednesday afternoon when, around 7:30 p.m., Maria fell asleep in the living room while Travis watched TV.
Moments later, a body-walloping blast shook their home. It could be heard 17 miles off, as far away as Higginsville, and it shattered their front windows, exploding glass into their living room.
“It was like a bomb,” Maria Summers said. “I never heard anything louder or harder in my life.” She and her husband ran outside to their porch. “We come out here and there’s a little girl running up the street screaming.”
The child, Camillia “Cami” Lamb, 10 years old, had run naked from the shower. Her body was so burned, Travis said, they were unsure if the charring they witnessed was the girl’s clothes or her skin. Barely 18 months prior, just before Christmas in 2023, the child’s mother had died suddenly from complications from diabetes.
She and her brother and father, a single dad, had all been in the house together.
“She’s screaming, ’Is this real?!’” Maria Summers said. Neighbors from every home spilled onto the street. “Neighbors got a hold of her.” People found blankets. “Got her wrapped up.”
“She was literally running up the middle of the road,” Travis Summers said. Then, directly after, followed her father, Jacob Cunningham, burns everywhere, emerging from the rubble of his home, searching, they said, and saying, “I can’t find my son.”
His boy, 5-year-old Alistair Lamb, would die from the blast. Jacob Cunningham and his daughter were rushed to area hospitals.
All along Franklin Avenue, in the heart of this Civil War-era community’s historic neighborhood, residents two days later say they are left with scarring memories, homes with windows now boarded with plywood, but, most of all, grief and anger.
Grief for Jacob Cunningham and his family. And anger over a tragedy that they insist should never have happened.
“This was preventable,” Maria Summers said, her voice and eyes stern. “This was so preventable. But what happened to us is minimal to what happened where that hole is now, where that little boy was, with that terrified little girl, and that poor man who was looking for his children.”
Gas was in the air, they repeated. No one was told there was a danger. No one told residents that perhaps they should leave their homes.
Lexington, Missouri
“There’s a true devastation,” Rebecca Carlyle, 29, said Friday, standing near the heap of ruins that had been her childhood home, one lot east of Jacob Cunningham’s. Her mother and father, Alicia and Shane Billings, were at their home, outside, looking after Carlyle’s 18-month-old daughter, Ella, when the gas exploded, shooting black smoke into the sky.
“For anybody who had a hand in this, it was negligent. It was absolutely avoidable.
“And, yet, we are here, trying to pick up the pieces. Trying to put back any remnants of normal for these people — my mom, my dad, the poor family who lived next door. There is no words to say for them. There’s nothing that can be done for them. People are trying to raise money and make sure that they’re taken care of. But it’s not going to help. It’s not going to help the baby.”
The exact cause of the explosion remains unknown. What is known is that a crew was working in the area Wednesday afternoon when, at around 4 p.m., a gas line was breached. The worker is said to have stopped work and called authorities. Liberty Utilities responded along with Lexington Police and Lexington fire personnel.
Liberty Utilities was in the process of repairing the leak when the explosion occurred.
“We don’t know why they were working on the line for as long as they were and nothing happened, and then all of sudden something happened. We don’t know the trigger,” Lexington City Administrator Shawnna Funderburk said on Friday..
Funderburk and Lexington Mayor Tom Hughes were on the scene of the damage area on Friday afternoon.
“It is very devastating, “ Funderburk said. “Not just for the property damage, but because of the people that were injured, and the one fatality . . . It’s horrific.”
Cunningham and his children, she said, are family members of two city staffers.
“That adds another layer of grief. A lot of our first responders knew those folks, knew the family,” she said.
Funderburk said that Cunningham’s mother, Cathie Woods, works as the City Collector. Her husband, Tony Woods, works for the city street department.
“He is Cathie’s son. Those are their grandkids,” she said. Cunningham, she said, worked at a grocery store outside Kansas City.
Hughes said on Friday afternoon some 2,000 homes in Lexington were without gas. Nearby, a crew of workers with a backhoe were working to attempt to repair the source of the leak.
“That’s why they’re digging back here, to find out where the origination of the leak came from,” Hughes said. He said the National Transportation Safety Board is overseeing the project. Other federal agencies, including representatives from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have also been on site.
“Until they give the green light to repair the lines and also to turn the gas light on, there will be no gas,” Hughes said.
Hughes said the explosion was the worst disaster to hit the town since a fire at the Wentworth Military Academy some 50 years ago. No lives were lost then.
“Here,” Hughes said, “we have had lives injured. Loss of life. That’s not something that’s easy to get over.”
This story was originally published April 11, 2025 at 5:41 PM.
