Explosion, Fire Destroy Home Being Fumigated

May Kim poured her heart into her drawings. The 17-year-old aspiring artist knew her work needed to be exceptional to be accepted at the prestigious Cooper Union School of Art in New York.

Should she put them in the garage? No, her bedroom would be fine, she thought. That’s safe.

But on Wednesday morning an explosion ripped through her home on 4th Avenue in the Mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles, igniting a blaze that burned the house to the ground. The power of the blast tore the roof off and threw it onto the front lawn, where is was still sitting eerily hours after firefighters had extinguished the flames.

The house had been tented for fumigation. May Kim’s parents and grandmother had been staying at a hotel. She was staying with a friend. Brownie, the family dog with a litter of four puppies, hid in the doghouse and survived the explosion.

The fire began about 5:12 a.m. after a pilot light on a water heater ignited chemicals being used in the fumigation, said Bob Collis, spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department. The light should have been turned off before fumigation, Collis said.

Everything inside was destroyed. Beds, books, clothing, photos from the Kims’ native Korea. Monetary damage was estimated to be about $400,000. But the most painful loss was Kim’s paintings. The charcoals and watercolors, once rich and inspiring, were now blackened with soot and ash.

“It was the first thing she thought of,” said Kim’s close friend, who declined to give her name. “We ran over here together, and the first thing she said when she saw the house was ‘My artwork! Where is my artwork?’ ”

May Kim sat across the street from the charred home and stared at the destruction in disbelief. The family garage, which she used as an art studio, was left unscathed.

“I should have put them in the garage,” she said. “There were a few really good ones that I had just shown to my professor, and I was thinking of putting them in the garage. But I left them in the bedroom.”

It was the parents, Dongrok and Dongyeon Kim, who received the first call that their home was in flames. They called their daughter to meet them at the house.

Neighbor Beatrice Davis, 88, who lives across the street, said the explosion rocked the entire block and shook her out of bed. “I heard something go ‘poof’ and then I heard something fall,” she said. “At first, I thought it was an earthquake, so I checked the power. Then, when I looked outside, I saw all that billowing white smoke.”

Within minutes, about three dozen firefighters arrived. The fire was extinguished in 20 minutes.

Though she will never admit it, Kim is a genuine young talent. She is enrolled in the competitive Ryman Program for Young Artists. The nonprofit program was named for Herbert Ryman, an early associate of Walt Disney, and gives scholarships to aspiring high school artists with art courses held at USC.

The fact that she is even considering Cooper Union is telling. The Art School receives about 1,200 applications each year and accepts about 65 students. Original work is not required for admission into the Cooper Union School of Art, but the school admissions committee recommends it as support material that strengthens a prospective student’s application.

When Kim first saw the house, her initial reaction was shock. But when she realized all her best works had been destroyed, she shed no tears.

“What’s the use of crying? I just have to get to work,” she said.