A liquefied petroleum gas explosion in the Jaguaré district of São Paulo killed one resident and damaged around ten houses on Monday afternoon, the São Paulo state fire department said in a statement published on X. The blast occurred shortly after 3pm local time on Rua Ribeiro Lacerda, about 16 km west of the city centre, and triggered a fire that took roughly two hours to bring under control.
The fire department deployed twelve engines and confirmed the deployment of two emergency-medical-service units. Three people were transported to the Hospital das Clínicas and the Hospital Sírio-Libanês, with two listed in serious condition. Aerial footage from Globo News and Record showed destroyed rooftops, exposed roof timbers and dark smoke rising over the Jaguaré low-rise neighbourhood.
Civil-defence officials initially attributed the explosion to a liquefied-petroleum-gas leak in a residential supply line. A subsequent statement on Monday evening narrowed the focus to a single 13kg cylinder that had been refilled on Sunday at an unlicensed dealer, according to São Paulo state secretary for public security Guilherme Derrite. A formal forensic investigation by the São Paulo Civil Police's 17th precinct opened on Monday night.
Mayor Ricardo Nunes visited the site on Monday evening and announced that the municipal social-services department, FAS, would arrange temporary accommodation for 14 families displaced by the blast and would expedite damage assessments to access emergency-housing grants. "Jaguaré is a tight community," the mayor said. "The city moves quickly when its residents need it."
Domestic LPG distribution in Brazil is a regulated industry overseen by the National Petroleum Agency (ANP), with refill-and-resale operations restricted to licensed dealers. The state of São Paulo has the country's largest concentration of unlicensed refilling operations, particularly in metropolitan and informal-housing districts; a 2024 ANP audit identified roughly 1,200 unlicensed operators in the metropolitan region alone.
The Jaguaré blast is the third LPG-related fatality in São Paulo state this year, after a March explosion in Guarulhos and a January incident in Diadema. The state legislature's public-safety committee held hearings in April on a proposed bill to tighten penalties for unlicensed refilling, but the legislation has been stalled in the constitution-and-justice committee since.
Air quality across the Jaguaré and adjacent districts was rated moderate to poor on Tuesday morning by CETESB, the state environmental agency. Schools within a 500-metre radius of the site remained closed on Tuesday for safety inspections; routine public transport on the nearby Marginal Pinheiros highway was running normally.