SILVER SPRING, Md. — Officials said Tuesday they’re close to identifying the victims of an explosion and fire that ripped through a Silver Spring apartment complex last week.
“We’re hopeful that the identification process will be moving much further forward in the next couple of days,” Montgomery County police Assistant Chief Russ Hamill said Tuesday.
Police recovered a seventh body Tuesday. On Monday, the sixth body was discovered in what remains of Flower Hill Branch Apartments, a four-story apartment community on Piney Branch Road. On Aug. 10, a deadly explosion at the apartment community sent 34 people to the hospital and has left more than 50 homeless.
While investigators have yet to identify the dead, police have said the deceased were among the seven people who haven’t been accounted for since the explosion. Police released names and photos of the missing on Saturday.
Daniel Board, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said that investigators hoped to know the cause of the blast by the end of this week.
Residents had reported smelling gas before the explosion and officials responded to calls for a possible gas leak on July 25.
Testing was conducted Monday at buildings affected by the blast.
Earl Stoddard, director of Montgomery County’s Emergency Management and Homeland Security Office, said gas lines were “capped off” so that they would not impact the gas lines of adjacent buildings, which, “based on the inspection that’s been relayed to us by Washington Gas, those (gas) lines are safe.”
U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., said federal partners were working with local officials to help the displaced families. There were 110 people who called the Flower Hill Branch Apartments community home — 53 of whom are now living at a shelter.
