A violent explosion has killed two men at a villa in Vale d'El Rei near Lagoa. Firefighters, police and local medical services were soon on site with the blame at first attributed to an exploding gas bottle.
The early morning blast destroyed most of the detached property, damaged a nearby house and was followed by a fire.
Emergency services were alerted at 7.45 a.m. by a passing council worker and on their arrival the first fatality immediately was discovered. The second was found later under rubble.
One man was British and the other a Luxembourg national, both were long-term Algarve residents, one in his 70s and the other, his 80s.
Initially a gas explosion was suggested as the reason for the blast. Two gas bottles later were found intact, hinting at a gas leak which ignited.
Language professor Paul Fonk (73) and well-known artist Glynn Uzzell (84) died instantly due to the force of the explosion that was audible for several miles and described by locals as ‘like a bomb going off.’
BGlynn Uzzell was born in 1930 in Swindon, Wiltshire, and studied at London's Goldsmith’s College before taking up a teaching post in 1957 at the International School of Geneva, Switzerland where he was given a one-man show at the Musée de l’Athenée.
It was in Geneva there Uzzell met Mr Fonk from Luxemburg and the two moved to Caramujeira, near Lagoa, in 1979.
The couple bought and renovated an old farmhouse, decorating it with art including two works by David Hockney which are certain to have been destroyed in the blast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCpbQnND_U4&feature=share
