Anisha Rana was caring for four kids under the age of four at the daycare she runs out of her Langley, B.C., home when a deadly explosion rocked the house next door last Friday.
Rana recalls the moment she heard the loud boom from her basement.
“I couldn’t understand what was going on,” she said. “Is this a bigger earthquake? Is my house falling?”
She started screaming for her husband upstairs and then looked out her window in shock.
“When we were in the basement I could see a lot of falling debris out the window and I could hear maybe the glass break from the explosion,” she said.
Her training then kicked in, she said. She knew instantly her and the young children needed to get out of the house.
“We were in ‘get out mode,’” she said. “They are so little. But they were so brave and they were into action mode, too. They were following instructions.”
Every month she practices fire drills with her children, something she credits for the quick escape out the front door of her house.
The group then rushed across the street to a neighbour’s house and watched in horror.
“How did everyone come out of this without a scratch? It is just unbelievable for us,” she said.
1 of 12
She believes it was “miracle” that none of the children were injured and shudders to think what would have happened if she and the children were outdoors during the blast.
“It was sunny and I was really looking forward to take them outside earlier than I usually do,” she recalls.
Her backyard where the children would have played is completely singed from the fire and the side of her house was destroyed by the blaze.
“On one side, we feel like we are safe. On the other side, I keep going back to that day and keep thinking: What if?”
On Monday she was able to walk through her burned home for the first time since the explosion.
“The front of the home looks untouched,” she said. “But the back of the home looks like the end of the world.”
“It doesn’t feel like my home,” she said. “It feels like a ghost house and its very hard to see it like that.”
She and her husband and her are now living in a hotel while they work with their insurance company to figure out the next steps.
But Rana hasn;’t just lost her home, she’s lost her source of income.
“I suddenly realized, ‘Oh my God, I’m out of work’,” she said.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”
Langley RCMP say the cause of the explosion has not been determined, but the investigation so far points to the possibility that an illegal drug lab was operating in the home that exploded.
Rana told CTV News she never saw anything suspicious.
“They seemed like a regular family,” she said. “I used to take my children out in the backyard every day, and there they used to come out to see the children and say hi.”
RCMP confirmed Monday that one person was found dead after investigations over the weekend. Two other people were rushed to hospital in critical condition.
