Gladstone neighbors recount huge, deadly home explosion: ‘Thought it was an attack’

Ashleigh Tomlin was in her kitchen Saturday morning with her family when they all heard a massive bang. Her next-door neighbor’s house in Gladstone had just exploded.

She and her family hit the ground and a ceiling lamp came down, hitting Tomlin on the head and giving her a concussion.

They thought a plane had crashed.

“We were just freaking out. I mean, we thought it was an attack,” she said.

Firefighters responded just after 11 a.m. to Northeast 74th Terrace and North Main Street Saturday after multiple calls from residents about the explosion that officials later learned had killed one man and one dog.

Officials used cadaver dogs to uncover the remains of a deceased adult man. His remains were unidentifiable, so confirmation of his identity may take a while, according to Gladstone Fire Chief Mike Desautels.

The Gladstone Fire Department, Gladstone Police Department, ATF and other organizations were on the explosion site Saturday until later that night. The American Red Cross was on the scene, too.

Heather Garcia who lives off Northeast 74th Terrace, was still in bed when she heard the loud boom and felt her house shake. She ran outside in search of her husband, Carlos Garcia, whom she knew was outside mowing.

“I came running outside, I don’t have any shoes on. I honestly thought maybe a tree had fallen on my house. I came outside and I started screaming for him,” she said.

Carlos Garcia was about to head to the front yard at the time of the explosion, but after finding his wife, called his neighbor across the street — who lived next door to the explosion. That neighbor was not home, but her senior black lab, Kipper, was. With her permission, he broke in to save the dog.

“We couldn’t even really see the house at first because there was just so much smoke,” Heather Garcia said.

All three neighbors knew the elderly man who lived in the home. Carlos Garcia was the one to call the victim’s son to tell him what happened, hoping at the time that his neighbor wasn’t home.

“It was a pretty traumatic day,” Heather Garcia said.

Impact felt across Gladstone

The reverberations from the explosion were felt in the surrounding neighborhoods, too.

Abby Bayack, who lives in Parkside Apartments in Gladstone, was with her toddler and thought the explosion was a large earthquake, given how badly it shook her unit.

“It was pretty terrifying when we had no clue what was going on. One of our neighbors said they had things fall off of shelves in their apartment. There was debris flying around outside, and the fire was visible just beyond the tree line behind the apartment complex,” Bayak wrote over social media direct messages.

There were several smaller explosion after that and tons of smoke, according to Bayack.

Cleaning up debris

In the Sunday mid-morning heat, Heather Garcia and Tomlin were outside cleaning their yards, picking up the seemingly endless bits of broken glass. Carlos Garcia used a blower to clear out the roads with another neighbor as dozens of cars cruised past.

The tree in the victim’s front yard stood intact, with structural debris, a blanket and a flannel coat still hanging from the branches.

Desautels, the Gladstone fire chief, said the investigation into what caused the deadly explosion will likely take some time because of the significant debris it caused.

This story was originally published June 1, 2025 at 4:10 PM.

Noelle Alviz-Gransee

The Kansas City Star

Noelle Alviz-Gransee is a breaking news reporter for the Kansas City Star. She studied journalism and political science at MU and has previously written for the Des Moines Register, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, The Missourian, Startland News and the Missouri Business Alert.