Twenty-six injured in explosion at Florida casino

Early-morning gamblers at a casino were sent running from their slot machines Monday after part of a fire suppression system exploded during servicing, officials said. 

The sudden blast at the popular casino in Hollywood injured 26 people, with six of the wounded requiring hospitalization, but none of the injuries were considered life threatening, the Seminole Classic Casino reported. 

Contract workers were performing routine, six-month maintenance on the building’s fire suppression system, which uses a compressed non-flammable gas to extinguish the flames, when the explosion occurred. 

The incident took place shortly before 10 am, when one of the lines they had recently reconnected to a tank containing the gas ruptured after they turned the system back on,  reported. 

‘It had been reconnected with a gas canister,’ Seminole Tribe spokesperson Gary Bitner told the station. ‘It’s actually fire suppression equipment that uses gas to put out a fire.’

It is housed on the second floor of the building in an equipment room along with the casino’s servers and offices, and the explosion caused serious damage to the surrounding area in addition to sending fiberglass, drywall and other debris flying into the casino area below, according to the . 

There were about 100 patrons and employees in the building at the time of the explosion, Bitner said, and witnesses described it as a loud noise. 

‘It was an extremely loud explosion,’ Keith Richards, pastislotqq who was inside playing blackjack told Local 10. ‘Like a transformer burst. It was a very loud sound. You see all those fibers falling from the drywall.’

‘There was a big explosion in the wall and then som