A man is desperately seeking information about members of his extended family after the explosion that flattened a building in Leicester on Sunday evening, killing at least five people.
Firefighters using search and rescue dogs are continuing to search the collapsed property amid fears there are people who remain unaccounted for.
A Leicestershire fire and rescue spokesman said emergency services were searching for gaps in the building in which people could have survived. The search is expected to continue throughout Monday.
He [my brother-in-law] doesn’t know what’s happened to his other children, he said. His two older sons are missing, his wife is missing and one of his son’s girlfriends is believed to be missing. We’ve been waiting [for news] since 7pm last night.
He said he had spoken to the youngest son. He is dazed, he said. He said he was at home surrounded by his family; the next thing he knew bricks were falling on him and it was pitch dark.
The flat was above a Polish shop, according to residents, although they said the business had changed hands several times in recent years.
Tony Hartley, who lives around 50 yards away from the blast site, told the Press Association: I was standing in the kitchen and heard a bang so I ran up the road and could see glass everywhere.
Me and a friend lifted up a steel girder with about five other blokes and removed a bloke from underneath it.
We then turned round, saw rubble and heard a little boy crying.
There was me and another bloke sifting through the rubble and we managed to pull the boy out.
I said to him, Is there anybody else in there? and he said, My friend’s a metre back inside the building and that’s when the emergency services turned up.
Hartley, 33, said the boy, thought to be aged between 10 and 13, was able to walk after being freed.
Dad was lifting up bricks to help a person and he managed to get him out. He couldn’t get anyone else out and the fire brigade arrived and told him to move away.
The cause of the fire remains unknown. Sunan Logue, 31, said she used to work in the shop when it was a Londis and at that time it did not have a boiler so she doubted whether there could have been a gas explosion there.
Many residents also suffered power cuts as a result of the blast although electricity had been restored by Monday morning.