BREMERTON – An acrid smell of smoke filled the air near Motel 6 in Bremerton as firefighters and other emergency personnel dealt with an explosion that partially destroyed the building around 8 p.m. Aug. 18.

According to the Everett Herald, the acting hotel manager had evacuated the building because of a gas leak.

Bremerton Police Chief Steve Strachan said there were no reports of anyone trapped inside, the Herald stated.

According to Twitter messages from the Bremerton Police Department, one gas company employee was critically injured with second- and third-degree burns and flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. BPD stated the gas leak call came in at 7:54 p.m. and that the explosion occurred at 8:24 p.m.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the Cascade Gas employee critically injured tonight,” read one of the Tweets.

Manager Tonya Hinds said that a passerby came into her office to say a gas line was leaking at the back of the building. She inspected the line and saw a major leak of gas, and then pulled the motel alarm and evacuated the building.

“I wanted to make sure all my guests were out,” she said.

Hinds said the motel had 65 guests in 42 occupied rooms, and the blast destroyed about one-quarter of the building. She said one guest may have seen someone jumping out of a window of the three story motel just before the leak.

Firefighters from Bremerton, South Kitsap, Central Kitsap and Navy Fire responded to the scene.

According to the police scanner, a security video has been recovered. A technical rescue was also mentioned in scanner traffic, but further details on that are not available

Hundreds of people lined the streets near the motel to watch firefighters deal with the destruction. Among them was Johnathan Davis, who lives near the motel on Charleston Avenue. Davis said he was cooking hamburger around 8 p.m. when explosion happened

“Boom! I thought, ‘Damn. Earthquake!” Davis said. “I was jumping.”

He ran outside and toward the motel and saw a big fire, he said

“The car wash is gone,” he said

“I walk past it every day,” he said of the motel.

Domico Hutson, who was visiting at a residence along Charleston Avenue, said the whole house shook

“I thought it was a bomb or something,” Hutson said

“The part of that ‘L’ is gone,” Hutson said of the “L”-shaped motel.

“The part you see right now is all that stands at that building,” he said of the longer line of the “L.” The short part was destroyed.

Randy Reite, who lives on Ford Avenue just a couple of blocks from the motel, said the explosion “Sure shook the house” at around 8:15 p.m.

Reite was listening to the police scanner at the time of the explosion. He said the scanner traffic indicated the gas company had been working on problem with a gas smell at the hotel for about an hour. Then he heard that firetrucks had been dispatched to the motel. Then came the explosion.

“It was a pretty good explosion,” he said.

Reite said homes right across the street from the motel had their windows blasted out.

Firefighters pour water on flames at the rear of the Bremerton Motel 6 along 11th Street Aug. 18.

Looking eastward toward the rear of Motel 6 along 11th Street in Bremerton.

A few of the hundreds of people who walked near the motel to watch responders work.

Black smoke rises into the air as people watch the fire Aug. 18.

Firefighters use a car wash next to the motel as a staging area.

A fierce fire burns on the east side of the motel property.