One man has been pronounced dead after a house exploded in Caledon Village on Sunday, Feb. 3.

Caledon Ontario Provincial Police identified the victim as Joseph Westcott, 54, of 9 Maple Grove Road.

“This is a high order explosion, said Andrea Gaynor, fire investigator of Ontario Fire Marshal and Emergency Management. “The blast pressure wave that went through here was more than 1,000 metres per second. It's shattering everything in its path, and there's a positive pressure wave that goes out and the negative pressure comes back. Sometimes that negative pressure is as forceful as the positive one or more so.”

Officers found debris of his house littered throughout the neighbourhood. His single-storey home was decimated as a silver van, in what appears to be a driveway, had wood chips around it.

Read the full story in Thursday's Caledon Citizen.