A gas explosion followed by a partial collapse of the building resulted in a number of people being trapped inside a Pennsylvania nursing home on Tuesday afternoon.

The explosion and subsequent fire took place at Silverlake Nursing Home in Bristol Township, Bucks County — which is near Philadelphia — and first responders rushed to the scene.

More photos from the Silver Lake Nursing Home gas explosion in Bristol Pennsylvania

There are multiple injuries and the fire is not yet contained pic.twitter.com/ekI7gvnlw3

— PhillyCrimeUpdate (@PhillyCrimeUpd) December 23, 2025

Bucks County officials told The Associated Press that they were first notified that there had been an explosion at the facility shortly after 2 p.m. local time. Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency spokesperson Ruth Miller told the outlet they were also informed at that time that a portion of the building had collapsed and that an unknown number of people could still be trapped inside.

ABC News posted video of the fire that continues to burn on site, reporting that police have declared a “mass casualty incident” and have asked people to “avoid the area.”

BREAKING: A massive fire has erupted at a nursing home in eastern PA following a possible gas explosion, officials said.

Police described it as a “mass casualty incident” at the Silver Lake Nursing Home and asked people to avoid the area in Bristol.https://t.co/EN9IPJbJGe pic.twitter.com/JQDFwUDD03

— ABC News (@ABC) December 23, 2025

State Rep. Tina Davis, who represents the area including the Silver Lake facility, said that she approached the area in her car, but held back to avoid getting in the way of those working the scene: “I saw smoke and I saw car after car after car was a fire truck or ambulance from all over the city, from all over.”

“It’s just so sad — it’s that hopeful time of year. This is just something that is sad for everybody and the families and the workers that are there. I hope there’s positive results from this. We don’t know at this point,” Davis said.

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Governor Josh Shapiro (D-PA) addressed the tragedy in a post on X, saying, “I’ve been briefed on the incident at Silver Lake Nursing Home in Bucks County, and my Administration is in contact with local officials and first responders on the ground. @PEMAHQ and @PAStatePolice have offered their full support and any resources needed. The scene is still active, and folks nearby should follow the direction of local authorities. Please join Lori and me in praying for the Bristol community.”

The Silver Lake facility gets poor ratings from Medicare overall, but no citations were issued when a routine fire inspection was done in 2024. A state level inspection done in October found several issues, however, including the absence of a Life Safety Code Floor Plan — a detailed map of the facility that shows the exact locations of exits and fire and smoke barriers.

In recent decades, the leftist political ethos has taken over how to tell fairy tales.

My favorite example is the arc Disney has gone through.

I’m a huge fan of the old Disney films. It makes me really sad how Disney has destroyed its own intellectual property and really screwed itself up as a company in the service of politics.

My favorite example is the difference between the film “Pinocchio” and the film “Frozen.”

In “Pinocchio,” Jiminy Cricket sings, “Always let your conscience be your guide.” The entire story of “Pinocchio” is that the boy who is coming of age refuses to let his conscience be his guide. He has to explore every bad idea, and finally learns that responsibility for protecting his own family and his father is actually how you become a real boy. The way that you actually mature in the world is to take on responsibility and duty and act with conscience, as opposed to going to Pleasure Island.

The theme could not have been more clearly stated.

Contrast that with the immorality of the most popular song in the last 20 years from Disney, “Let It Go,” in which there is literally a lyric that says “No right, no wrong, no rules, I’m free,” which is about as pagan an ethos as is possible to get.

You can see the arc of American morality in three generations right there.

If you look back to Shakespeare, he sometimes creates a toned-up version of fairy tales. All of his comedies are essentially a type of fairy tale, and every single one of them ends with a marriage. That’s because life is funny; all these bad things happen, and yet the generations move on. You get married, and you build something.

With the tragedies, everyone dies at the end. In these works, death is a tragedy because the characters have not fulfilled their function of passing it on to the next generation.

Moreover, in the tragedies, it’s not just an old person dying, it’s the young person dying that’s the real tragedy. The tragedy of King Lear isn’t Lear’s death; it’s Cordelia’s death.

That’s true throughout all of the stories of the West: the importance of the deepest things. And because we have become a sterile civilization, I wonder, how much of that is connected to the sterility of rationality?

I really pride myself on rationality. I love reason, reason’s great; logic is great. But the truth is that the things that people tie themselves to are beyond reason.

I’ve spoken about what I call role theory, which is the idea that all of religion and all of culture is built around particular roles that are universal to human beings.

But we as a society have decided that roles are bad. Roles are impositions from the outside. What we really are is free-floating, authentic desire. And because roles come with rules, they are an imposition on us, and therefore, we have to explode those roles to live a free and full life. In reality, the roles are what make us who we are. And that’s pretty much what every fairy tale is about.

What every great story is about is a person reconciling and making the most of the role that has been laid out for them; the world pre-exists you; you’re meant for a role the minute you’re born. That role is laid out for you. You have liberty to live out choices within that role, but the minute that liberty becomes a universal asset that destroys the role, the minute that happens, it’s no longer liberty.

Then it becomes libertinism, and everything descends into chaos.