‘It’s a miracle’: Belmont bakery owner barely escapes explosion

Ohlin’s Bakery in Belmont was the scene of a Tuesday morning explosion when an oven blew up shortly after the owner turned it on.

Owner Paul Klemm told CBS that he and an employee were inside the bakery shortly before 2:30 a.m. when he turned on the oven and narrowly avoided the subsequent explosion.

“It’s a miracle that I had walked away, because I went to get a pan and I didn’t get to that pan, but the stack of trays protected me from the oven,” Klemm said to CBS. “It’s a miracle.”

The blast knocked him over, and the other worker avoided injury, WHDH stated in a related report. The bakery’s rear wall was damaged, and an adjacent barbershop’s window was broken out.

Klemm, whose eyebrows and hair were singed in the blast, told CBS that the bakery had been in Belmont for about 100 years.

Firefighters and gas workers are investigating the incident, and officials have called it a “flash fire,” WHDH added.