Muthoni Nduthu had one last nursing shift at the Bristol Health and Rehab Center in eastern Pennsylvania before she and her family planned to hit the road on Christmas Eve to spend the holidays with relatives in North Carolina.
Instead, her family, stunned, gathered on Wednesday to mourn Ms. Nduthu, 52, who was killed, along with a female resident of the nursing home, when two explosions tore through the building in Bristol Township, Pa., on Tuesday afternoon, injuring 20 people and turning the 120-resident facility into a scene of fiery chaos.
On Wednesday, officials in Bucks County, Pa., outside Philadelphia, said they had yet to determine what had caused the blasts, which occurred after PECO, a regional energy company, responded to reports of a gas smell at the nursing home at about 2 p.m. on Tuesday.
Nineteen people hurt in the blasts remained hospitalized on Wednesday afternoon, one of them in critical condition. Officials said that nobody was still missing in the rubble. They said heavy machines would start to excavate sections of collapsed walls and roofs to give investigators access to determine what caused the blasts.
Officials marveled that the toll had not been worse. The two blasts trapped people in elevator shafts, stairwells and a collapsed basement. Rescuers carried out some residents on their shoulders and moved many into a nearby hospital as dogs and sonar equipment were rushed to the scene to look for survivors.
“They couldn’t walk,” Chief Charles Winik of the Bristol Township Police Department told reporters at a news conference on Wednesday. “They were in wheelchairs. Some of them couldn’t talk.”
The authorities did not provide detailed answers to questions from reporters about whether there had been previous calls to the facility about gas odors. The local fire chief, Kevin Dippolito, told reporters he did not think the Bristol department had responded to any fire-related calls at the nursing home in the past several weeks.
On Wednesday afternoon, smoke had stopped rising from the collapsed wing of the building, and most of the emergency vehicles had cleared out from the area.
A truck belonging to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ National Response Team remained on site, alongside multiple vehicles belonging to PECO. Two workers set up lengths of fencing around the perimeter of the property, while occasionally passing drivers slowed as they surveyed the scene.
The Bristol Health and Rehab Center, previously known as the Silver Lake Healthcare Center, has an overall rating of one out of five stars on the federal government’s Medicare website that rates nursing homes. That equates to “much below average” based on health inspections and staffing measures.
The federal government fined the center twice in 2024 for a total of $418,000 for infractions that included mistakenly giving seizure medication to the wrong patient and then not investigating the error, as well as failing to schedule appointments for patients and not providing wound care to a patient when it was prescribed.
A health inspection from September 2024 resulted in 24 citations, more than double the national and Pennsylvania averages, according to the Medicare website. Among the problems that inspectors found was that nurses had not put a plan in place to address a resident’s drug abuse despite multiple overdoses and hospitalizations. The nursing home was also cited for not giving appropriate treatment to a resident with dementia, providing the wrong medication to residents too often and failing to consider food allergies. Inspectors found broken handrails in hallways and other deficiencies.
There have also been 200 complaints in the last three years that resulted in a citation, according to the Medicare website. Among inspectors’ findings, in response to those complaints, were that a resident’s physician and family members were not contacted after the person got a bruise, staff failed to react to a resident’s weight loss, and, in one instance, an employee was fired after calling a difficult resident a “wicked witch.”
A spokesman for Saber Healthcare Group, which is affiliated with the facility, said Bristol Health “personnel promptly reported a gas smell” to the power company. The spokesman, Gregory Nicoluzakis, added, “We do not currently know the cause of the fire, nor are we sure of the extent of its damage. We continue to work with local agencies and health care partners. Information remains forthcoming.”
Ms. Nduthu’s oldest son, Clinton Ndegwa, said he could not process that his mother had died in the explosions.
He said his mother had been excited for the trip to see family in North Carolina over Christmas and had been planning to cook a Kenyan feast featuring dishes such as beef pilau or pillowy pastries called mahamri.
Ms. Nduthu immigrated from Kenya in 2004, her son said, and like many immigrants starting from scratch in the United States, she worked with older and frail Americans in long-term care. She was a licensed practical nurse, according to Pennsylvania nursing records, and her son said she had worked at the Bristol facility for about a year.
“We’re immigrant kids, first generation,” Mr. Ndegwa said. “She worked to try to provide for her family. She liked serving people. She took pride in that.”
On Tuesday, he said one of his younger brothers called him to say there had been an explosion at Bristol Health, and that their mother was not answering her phone.
Mr. Ndegwa said he and his family waited at a nearby hospital all evening, hoping she had been taken to a different hospital or would still be found alive in the wreckage. They learned around 8:30 p.m. that Ms. Nduthu had died. Mr. Ndegwa said the family has not been able to claim her body because of the ongoing investigation into the blast.
Mr. Ndegwa said Ms. Nduthu was a “strong mom” who stressed the importance of hard work and education to her sons, and had hoped to go back to school to advance her nursing education.
“She told us to go to school, get jobs,” he said. “Life won’t be easy, but life will be much better,” he said his mother advised.
Mr. Ndegwa said his mother had also taken pride in how she looked and dressed, so for Christmas this year, he had bought her a Coach bag. He did not have a chance to give it to her.
Georgia Gee contributed research.
Chris Hippensteel is a reporter covering breaking news and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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