FORT LAUDERDALE — Dennis Cabrera started shooting video on his phone after hearing a blast outside of where he works.
“It wasn’t until I made my way outside that I saw the building was gone over there,” Cabrera said.
He found out it was an explosion at a vacant pizza parlor down the street. He’s glad his business didn’t have to close permanently.
“We had to shut down for 5-6 months at this particular location,” Cabrera said.
The explosion was five years ago, in a shopping plaza in Plantation on University Drive, where at least 20 people were injured. Investigators say it happened because a gas valve at the empty pizza parlor was supposed to be shut off, but it wasn’t.
“I thought it was a terrorist attack,” said a witness in 2019 when the explosion happened.
“The ceiling just dropped in on us. And the windows just blew right in,” said another witness from the explosion.
Cabrera says in this plaza, only a handful of businesses are still here since the explosion.
“There used to be a Chinese place,” Dennis said. “I mean the whole water system. They got flooded out. They never opened up.”
City Council member Denise Horland says she went to the scene. She is shocked no one died and says the fact that it was a holiday weekend may have been why.
“Normally those businesses would have been open on a Saturday,” Horland said. “Had it not been a holiday weekend I think it would have been a completely different story.”
Investigators deemed the cause “undetermined” because they could not conclude why the gas valve was open. Councilmember Horland is glad that the spaces in that center are rebuilt and occupied.