A California neighborhood looked like a war zone this week—and the whole thing was caught on a doorbell camera.
Take a look at this wild video:
Boom—just like that, a home near Hayward, California, exploded into a fireball, launching debris into the sky and shaking the entire neighborhood. You can hear the sirens wailing almost immediately after. This wasn’t a movie scene. This was real life, and six people ended up in the hospital.
Christian Maldonado, the guy whose doorbell cam picked it up, said it best: “It was like a scene from Hollywood. It was unreal.” Yeah, no kidding.
This all went down in the Ashland area, just outside Hayward in the San Francisco Bay. The blast was so powerful it destroyed three buildings, damaged nearby homes, and knocked out windows all over the place. One woman, Deborah, who lives nearby, said her whole house is trashed—cracks in the ceiling, windows blown out. “My house is destroyed,” she told local news.
And here’s where things get even crazier. According to fire officials, 75 firefighters were called in to tackle this beast of a blaze. That’s not your average house fire. That’s a full-blown emergency. Some of those firefighters even had to back off because power lines had fallen and were shocking people at the scene. Think about that—these guys run into burning buildings for a living, and even they had to retreat.
So what caused this massive explosion? Turns out, a construction crew—not the utility company—hit a gas line underground. That’s right, someone was digging where they shouldn’t have been. Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) said they got the call around 7:35 a.m. and rushed to shut off the gas. They managed to isolate the line by 9:25 a.m., but by then, gas had been leaking for nearly two hours. And just ten minutes after they shut it off—boom.
PG&E confirmed that three of their own workers were injured in the blast. The other three people burned were residents of the home that exploded. They’re being treated for third-degree burns. Third-degree. That’s as serious as it gets.
This all happened in a neighborhood that’s been under construction lately for—you guessed it—bike lanes and wider sidewalks. Because apparently, in California, the priority is always bike lanes before basic safety. No word yet on exactly which crew hit the line, but let’s be real: someone’s got a lot of explaining to do.
And in true California fashion, the fallout was chaos. Interstate 238 had to be shut down. Emergency crews flooded the area. Families were left without homes right before the holidays. And the cause? A gas line strike that should’ve never happened.
This is what happens when public safety takes a backseat to feel-good projects and poor planning. Californians are paying the price—again.
Authorities are still investigating, but one thing is clear: this neighborhood won’t be the same for a long time. Three properties gone. Six people hurt. Dozens more shaken to the core.
Let this be a wake-up call. When you put politics and pet projects ahead of safety, people get hurt. And this time, we’ve got the video to prove it.