‘He thought he was dead’: Man survives after cabin explodes with him still inside

HARTSEL, Colo. (KKTV/Gray News) - A Colorado man has a long road to recovery after miraculously surviving a cabin explosion.

According to the Hartsel Fire Protection District, multiple 911 calls came in on the night of Aug. 23 regarding a structure fire.

Multiple agencies responded and the cabin was found to be engulfed in flames with “multiple explosions continuing.”

April Gallegos said her father Michael Sanchez built the cabin in rural Park County and had been living there for the last five years.

She said he told her he first noticed the cabin was on fire when he was cooking dinner.

“He was going to get his fire extinguisher to put it out but then another explosion went off and that’s when the roof of his cabin started falling and he got knocked out a little bit,” she said. “He thought he was dead, literally dead.”

Gallegos said while her dad still has trouble remembering exactly what happened.

“He felt like a presence that gave him the strength to crawl out, he literally crawled out and laid there for a good hour until the fire department found him,” she said.

Gallegos said her father’s survival is nothing short of miraculous.

“Some people call it luck, I call it God,” she said. “I believe that it wasn’t time for my dad to go, and God carried him out of there.”

Airlifted from the scene, Gallegos said her father suffered second and third-degree burns all over his body and has had to get skin grafts on his back, rear and legs.

She said while he’s stable and in good spirits, he still has to live with the pain of losing everything he owned.

“He lost his clothes, he lost his late wife’s stuff, all his memories, his pictures, his truck, his dog that he loved so very much,” she said. “He lost everything. He’s living with the guilt of not being able to get his dog out, I mean, the poor man, it’s a tragedy.”

Gallegos has started a GoFundMe to help her father get back on his feet.

“Honestly, anything is going to help him get a new vehicle, new clothes, maybe a place to live,” she said.

Officials said the cause of the explosion and fire remain under investigation.

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