UPDATE: Explosion Rocks Cedar Falls Utilities Building

An explosion that could be heard across town rocked a Cedar Falls Utilities building this morning, but no one was injured.

The explosion happened at about 10 a.m. at CFU's electric generating station on West 27th Street in Cedar Falls, CFU posted on its website.

The incident occurred during a routine startup of a gas combustion turbine. No one was injured. Cedar Falls Utilities is investigating the cause.

Fire Chief John Schilling told the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier the explosion leveled about half the building. He said there should be no interruption of CFU services.

According to CFU's website, the 27th Street facility produces electricity using natural gas and provides a backup source of power during times of peak electric demand or when other sources of electricity are offline. The unit was installed in 2000 and is regularly maintained and tested. In a typical year the unit runs 10 to 15 times. CFU employees were on site today to monitor the unit during an annual generating capacity test.

"While we don’t use them as a daily source of electricity, our gas combustion turbines are an important reliability asset for our customers,” said CFU General Manager Jim Krieg. “For example, in 2007 high capacity transmission lines that bring power to Black Hawk County were flattened by an ice storm. Local generating assets like our gas turbines made it possible for us to keep the lights on.”

CFU will determine the best way to repair or replace this local generation source after the analysis of today’s event is complete.