POCATELLO — All Pocatello resident Troy Wellard and his family want for Christmas is to be home for the holidays.

As of Thursday, Wellard, his fiancee Martina Hoyd, his son, Arijan, her two children, Austin and Angelina, and the family dog, Cooper, have been homeless and staying in a hotel for more than a week after the boiler exploded in the home they were renting.

Like any other winter night, Wellard and his family prepared for bed last Tuesday night listening to the lowly rumble of the boiler pressurizing the water within the pipes that heated their home.

“We went to bed fairly early that night and the boiler has always made a knocking sound when the metal expands from the heat going into it,” Wellard said. “It was a little louder than normal, but it didn’t give us any serious alarm.”

While Wellard and his family were fast asleep, though, the boiler exploded during the early morning of Dec 13.

“Next thing you know I’m waking up to my ears ringing, we couldn’t breathe because there was so much heat in the room, and we didn’t realize it at first, but the ceiling was laying on us at that point,” Wellard said.

It took a few moments for everything to process, but as soon as he got his bearings, Wellard threw some clothes on and started clearing a path through the rubble to check on his children.

“My youngest was standing in the doorway crying,” Wellard said. “He was saying something, but I couldn’t hear him because my ears were still ringing.”

Arijan exited his room and Wellard sent both him and the youngest, Austin, through the path he had cleared. Meanwhile, Hoyd phoned emergency services and Wellard tried to look for the water shutoff valve.

“We had a column of water shooting out from where everything blew apart,” Wellard said. “The house was flooding, and I’m soaking wet by this point.”

Angelina’s room was upstairs and became the rendezvous point for the rest of the family whose rooms were in the basement.

“We get upstairs and the fire department told us we had to leave because there was a bad gas leak, too,” Wellard said. “We got out of there, got to the hotel and dropped the little ones off to their dad’s in the middle of the night.”

The force of the pressurized boiler exploded the walls, ceilings and windows of the basement level and was channeled mostly toward Wellard’s bedroom. The family doesn’t have a total count of what was damaged, but the Pocatello Fire Department estimates damages to the home are at least $20,000.

“But a total cost is really hard to ascertain at this point,” said Travis Smith, Pocatello Fire Department assistant chief of operations. “I don’t suspect damages are less than $20,000 — this blew walls out, all the windows out, blew sheetrock off the walls and even moved walls and floor joists. It really depends what a structural engineer would say.”

He continued, “It could be well over $100,000.”

Many, but not all, of the family’s belongings were severely damaged from the blast.

“It’s just heartbreaking to go back and see everything destroyed,” Wellard said. “The floors were buckled from the explosion, some glass items were destroyed, and the two floor joists above us were shattered and channeled all that energy into the ceiling above us.”

Wellard continued, “All the steam was released into our bedroom, shattering a huge mirror next to my fiancee’s head and blew out all the windows. It was like a bomb going off right next to us.”

And all of this happened after Wellard had only been home from the hospital for less than three days.

He had spent five days in the hospital after his appendix burst.

“I ended up in the emergency room the Tuesday before last and my appendix had been burst for over 24 hours and I was going septic,” Wellard said. “It was like a firecracker exploded inside of me.”

Wellard continued, “You really don’t realize how lucky you are until you almost die twice in two weeks.”

Aside from Hoyd stepping on a nail and requiring a Tetanus shot, Wellard and his family walked away completely unharmed.

“I’m definitely feeling a little feline-ish,” Wellard said. “All we are doing right now is looking for a place to live that we can bring our dog with us. We had a nice home before and we want a 4-bedroom that can house us all because we’ve been through so much with this dog.”

Wellard said he encourages homeowners and property owners to do regular maintenance on old boiler heating systems or any potentially dangerous equipment, adding that this accident could have been prevented.

Though Wellard and his family had renter’s insurance, which they said cost them as little as $11 per month and has paid for their entire hotel stay, what they really need is a comfortable, safe place to live.

“We just want to get repositioned to get our lives back together,” Wellard said. “There is a point in life where you get comfortable and it gets pulled out from underneath you and its hard to try and ask for help again. All we want is a place of our own to sleep at night.”