A firefighter chief is dead and twelve others were injured following an explosion of a home in Kingsbridge, which is now under suspicion for housing a so-called “grow house.”

Battalion Chief Michael Fahy, a 17-year veteran with the FDNY, was struck with debris from the exploding home at 300 W. 234th Street as he directed operations from outside the home.

“It’s a terrible loss for the family, for the Fahy family,” FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said at a news conference at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where Fahy was rushed to. “It’s a loss for the Fire Department family. We are a family. We feel it deeply.”

News the two-story home was suspected of holding a grow house that cultivated marijuana was determined an hour after Con Edison was called at just before 7 a.m. on Sept. 27 for an odor of gas. The NYPD had preliminary information the home was a suspected lab for weeks, though it had been in the middle of investigating it, according to NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill. Two of the injured were renters of the house, though no one has been arrested yet, according to O’Neill.

The explosion was heard as far away as Kingsbridge Road and Riverdale, with debris catapulting towards neighboring homes yards away. “When I looked at it you could see the roof and a hole and then it all capsized,” a resident who went by Sheila said. She added that young people had occupied the house for years. “They were probably college students.”

Residents described the sound as a “big bang” with sound comparable to a “thunderstorm.”

“We heard a big bang,” said one resident of West 232nd Street, a full block away from the wreckage. “I was actually on the toilet and it rocked the toilet, it was very powerful. It shook the house.”

Another resident said of the firefighter’s, “I just saw a bunch of them walking back this was and they looked very distraught, so now I guess I know why, they lost one of theirs. It’s very sad. It’s a tragedy.”

A freshman at Manhattan College offered, “I just moved to New York and my first reaction was like, this is something really bad, like terrorism So I’m slightly relieved to know that. But it’s a little terrifying to be new to the neighborhood and this happening.

It’s believed that all of the injured were removed to New York-Presbyterian Hospital on Broadway.

Additional reporting by David Cruz.