It's now been more than 24 hours since an explosion destroyed a home in Sydney’s west and rescue workers have yet to find a woman they believe is buried in the rubble. The blast happened around lunchtime yesterday, shattering the usually peaceful neighbourhood of Whalan, and forcing nearby residents from their homes. While the cause of the explosion is still unknown, the New South Wales government say it's urgently investigating reports of smells of gas weeks before this incident.
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00:00 Working through the night, rescuers struggle with huge slabs of heavy concrete, searching
00:07 the rubble for a daughter believed to be visiting her mom at the time of the blast.
00:12 The operation at this point is still a rescue mission, not a recovery one.
00:17 The mother is in my garage waiting for, you know, she's been there all, like, since it
00:24 happened yesterday and all last night and everything.
00:28 You know, she's sitting there, she's so upset.
00:31 Search dogs and monitoring equipment have been brought in to help, with every tool available
00:36 being used in the painstaking search.
00:39 But it is largely by hand, brick by brick, plank by plank.
00:44 Those efforts will continue and they will continue until we locate a person or until
00:49 we can substantively say that there is no person within the area that is being searched.
00:55 Several people have told the ABC that they'd smelt gas in the area in the lead up to the
01:01 explosion.
01:02 My next door neighbour, he called the gas company and the gas company said, no, there
01:07 was no leak or anything, but we could smell gas for the last two weeks.
01:12 We are extremely concerned that there are reports of residents in the local community
01:19 there smelling gas for some time.
01:23 The housing minister is investigating that promptly, urgently.
01:29 The company, Gemina, that supplies gas to homes in this street, says that their teams
01:33 are investigating this incident, but that the cause remains unknown.
01:38 More than 24 hours on from the explosion, rescuers face a second night under floodlights
01:44 searching for any evidence of the missing woman.
01:47 [BLANK_AUDIO]