Searchers return to deadly apartment fire scene

“We can not determine the age or gender of people we took out of the Arliss Avenue address due to the conditions of the bodies”, Montgomery County Assistant Police Chief Russ Hamill said.

A third body was found late Friday afternoon.

The bodies have been taken to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore for autopsy and possible identification.

People more than a mile away reported feeling their homes shake in the blast just before midnight Wednesday night in a working-class neighborhood just two miles from the District of Columbia border.

Thirty-one residents and three firefighters were transferred to local hospitals with non life-threatening injuries, officials said at the news conference.

Two bodies were found Thursday, and a third was recovered Friday, police said. Still, others have questioned whether building maintenance may have played a role.

Fire officials say search efforts have been slowed because the building is in danger of collapse and needs to be shored up.

Fire officials on Thursday had initially said five to seven people were unaccounted for. Police later said they don’t have a firm number.

“Investigators are still working to identify the missing people from this event”. “We do not have a number at this time”.

In one call, a distressed woman said, “Oh my god, I’m freaking out”, before giving the dispatcher the address of the apartment building on Piney Branch Road.

“From our investigators, the fire rescue investigators, the ATF investigators, tragically that doesn’t seem that that’s a possibility at this time”, he said.

Hamill said that investigators have accounted for about 110 people residing in the building, and he said they are still asking family and friends to contact them “until we can account for everyone who is in the building”.

An explosion and a fire ripped through an apartment complex in Silver Spring on Wednesday night. Hamill said four detectives were sorting through information Thursday evening trying to determine exactly who is missing following the explosion and fire. When asked about reports of the smell of gas in the area before the explosion, officials said they are at the preliminary stages of investigation. Washington Gas, which serves more than 1.1 million customers in Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C., turned off the natural gas to the complex around 1:45 a.m. Thursday morning. Officials responded to calls for a potential gas leak at the complex last month. “Our thoughts are with the families impacted by this event”, the company said in a statement to ABC News on Thursday. The whole apartment is on fire, from bottom to top. Officials are looking into the complaint.

Firefighters on a ladder truck spray water on the still-smoldering remains of a structure after an explosion and fire in the Flower Branch Apartments complex, on August 11, 2016 in Silver Spring, Maryland.