Heartbreak: 2 families grieving over loss

SARATOGA SPRINGS — A couple of children's plastic spoons covered with mud, his wife's wedding dress and a charred scrapbook are among the only things Greg Roper has left of life as he knew it.

Roper, surrounded by family members, sifted through the rubble of his home on Wednesday morning while teams of Questar employees tried to figure out what caused the explosion that killed their co-worker, Larry Radford, and Roper's wife, April, the day before.

At 4:01 p.m. Tuesday, police dispatchers received a call that the Ropers' home on Badger Lane in Saratoga Springs had exploded with such force that the house collapsed after a fireball shot into the air.

Earlier, a construction company had punctured a natural gas line in the neighborhood, and Questar had already responded to fix the pipe and secure the area.

Although emergency crews were on scene by 4:10 p.m., according to Utah County Sheriff's Sgt. Spencer Cannon, an ensuing blaze kept firefighters out of the house until hours later.

The bodies of Radford, 48, and April Roper, 24, were found in the basement just after 9 p.m., buried under heavy pieces of debris that had been moved by a track hoe, Cannon said. He said the two might have gone downstairs to ignite a pilot light after checking and securing the house.

The explosion rattled the walls of houses nearly a block away, but a neighbor, her son and Roper's 18-month-old daughter, Olivia, who had just walked into the home's garage just before the blast, were not seriously hurt.

"It's a miracle," said Gail Roper, Greg Roper's father. "I think it's very good that (Greg) has his little daughter. That gives him purpose in life. If he had lost both of them, I think it would be very traumatic for him."

Greg Roper, 25, had tried to find his wife in the rubble just after the explosion, according to a contractor who was working in the neighborhood and saw the blast.

"He went into the burning house, you could feel the heat in the road — the flames were 15 to 20 feet tall — and he was still in there looking," Lee Maynard said. "He came out and collapsed outside and started screaming. He collapsed from emotion, and that's all I could see all night."

Questar officials are still investigating the cause of the blaze.