HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Hours before a deadly explosion ripped through a Pennsylvania nursing home last month, staff grew concerned about the smell of natural gas on several floors and brought in workers from the local utility company to check it out, federal regulators said Wednesday.
The preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board provides details about the three hours that passed between the report of a gas odor and the thunderous blast in Bristol, just outside Philadelphia, as well as how utility workers were on the scene for much of that time. It also notes that a utility worker traced the leak to a valve in a meter set in the basement boiler room.
While the presence of utility workers and witness accounts of a heavy gas smell in the explosion's aftermath raised questions about a possible leak, PECO had said at the time it could not determine the cause or whether its equipment was involved.
Two residents and an employee were killed and about 20 people injured, including one of the utility workers, just a few days before Christmas. Part of the building collapsed, trapping people inside, as emergency workers, staff and even medics from a nearby hospital rushed to evacuate people.
Exelon, PECO’s parent company, shut off the gas flow to the facility almost two hours after the explosion, according to the report. It’s not clear why it took that long to do so.
Investigators plan to focus on Exelon’s pipeline safety management and how it trains people, their qualifications, “odor complaint response” and other factors.
With the new report, a PECO spokesperson said the company recognizes “the importance of continuous improvement and vigilance with respect to the safe and reliable delivery of electric and natural gas service.” The emailed statement expressed sympathy to the victims and their families, to displaced residents and to the wider community.
According to the report, a maintenance director at Bristol Health & Rehab Center reported the smell of natural gas in the basement on Dec. 23 and called the utility company. The PECO worker arrived at Bristol Health & Rehab Center just before noon, about an hour after the odor was detected. Staff also smelled gas on the first and second floors.
The Exelon energy technician determined there was a leak on a meter set valve in the basement and called for help fixing it. A meter set includes the meter, regulator, piping, valves and fittings.
An Exelon foreman sent out a meter services technician to make the repair. He arrived at about 1:20 p.m. The explosion occurred at around 2:15 p.m.
Federal inspectors say the line and gas equipment have been tested, with some items sent to a lab for more study.
FILE - Damage from an explosion at Bristol Health & Rehab Center is seen, Dec. 24, 2025, in Bristol Township, Pa. (Monica Herndon/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP, File)
Mississippi officials said they were sending sending 135 snow plows Wednesday to clear ice and snow from two interstate highways where frozen conditions caused huge traffic jams.
Emergency officials said they were rushing supplies to drivers stalled along ice-covered stretches of Interstates 55 and 22 in northern Mississippi, an area still reeling from a weekend winter storm that blasted parts of the South and the Northeast with ice and snow.
Helping stranded drivers and moving stalled vehicles “remains a top priority,“ Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said in a social media post. The Mississippi National Guard said citizen-soldiers equipped with wreckers began arriving before dawn to help clear I-55 and I-22.
Traffic remained snarled on the two interstates in northern Mississippi at mid-day Wednesday, many hours after problems began when plunging temperatures Tuesday night caused the highways to refreeze. Roadside cameras operated by the Mississippi Department of Transportation showed semitrucks and pickups bumper-to-bumper on stretches of I-22 lined with snow.
The Mississippi National Guard said citizen-soldiers equipped with wreckers began arriving before dawn to help clear I-55 and I-22.
In the small community of Red Banks, Mississippi, local authorities were asking people with all-terrain vehicles to bring water, food, blankets or gas to stranded motorists, said Lacey Clancy, who works at a cafe near I-22 and neighboring Highway 178.
Clancy said sheets of ice covered the highways and cars and trucks sat idle, covering the highways and backing up along on ramps and exit ramps.
“The highway kind of looks like a parking lot," Clancy said in a phone interview. “A lot of people have run out of gas, abandoned their vehicles.”
Most of the eastern U.S. was still grappling with frigid weather days after a weekend storm blasted the Northeast and parts of the South with snow and ice.
More than 380,000 homes and businesses, most of them in Mississippi and Tennessee, remained without electricity, according to the outage tracking website poweroutage.us. And at least 50 people had been reported dead in states afflicted by the dangerous cold.
The toll includes three Texas brothers — ages 6, 8 and 9 — who perished after falling through the frozen surface of a pond in Texas. Another child, a toddler, died at a Virginia hospital after being pulled from a frigid pond Monday, according to local police.
Temperatures in the Midwest and Northeast were forecast to remain well below freezing throughout the day Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service.
Residents still shivering in the South were getting little relief. In Nashville, Tennessee, where nearly 100,000 power outages lingered early Wednesday, high temperatures were to rise just above freezing before plunging to 13 F (minus 10 C) overnight.
One Nashville hospital was seeing a spike in patients being treated for carbon monoxide poisoning as people without electricity turned to fuel-burning generators, stoves, gas heaters and fireplaces to warm their homes. At least 48 children exposed to the deadly gas had been treated since Saturday at the emergency department at Monroe Carrell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, spokesperson Jessica Pasley said.
Forecasters predicted even colder weather for much of the U.S. this weekend. A new blast of arctic air is expected Friday and Saturday from the northern Plains to the Southeast, where meteorologists say record cold could stretch as far as Miami.
The weather service said the prolonged freeze “could be the longest duration of cold in several decades.”
Forecasters said there is an increasing chance of heavy snow this weekend in the Carolinas and parts of Virginia, with more snowfall possible from Georgia to Maine.
Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. Martin reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tennessee, and Sarah Brumfield in Washington contributed to this report.
A tree blocks the road days after an ice storm in Nashville, Tenn., on Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Travis Loller)
