By Sergio Queiroz, Fernando Cardoso and Isabel Teles
SAO PAULO, May 11 (Reuters) – A fire set off by a potential gas explosion killed one person in Brazil’s biggest city Sao Paulo on Monday, while also damaging around 10 homes and leaving three people injured, the local fire department said.
Images from local media showed destroyed rooftops and smoke in the Jaguare neighborhood, about 16 km (10 miles) from Sao Paulo’s city center.
The Sao Paulo state fire department said in a post on X that it had deployed 12 fire engines to fight the fire, adding that a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) blast likely caused the incident.
A spokeswoman for the fire department told local media that officials had found a fatal male victim under the rubble. Two men and a woman were rescued with minor injuries, she added.
“Several buildings were hit. We don’t have the exact number, but we believe that around 10 were directly hit,” she said.
Firefighters at the scene were looking for any other victims.
“I couldn’t find my dog,” one resident said. “I was thrown out. It was me, my son, and my dog. My house exploded.”
(Reporting by Sergio Queiroz, Isabel Teles and Fernando Cardoso, additional reporting by Rodrigo Viga Gaier; Editing by Daina Beth Solomon and Rosalba O’Brien)
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