KALAELOA — Things were looking good for Sean Miguel Norva and Kimberly Anne Norva, his wife of two weeks, relatives said yesterday.

The couple had recently moved from Las Vegas to Waipahu, where Sean, 23, had grown up and gone to high school. Sean Norva got a job with a local welding company, and he and his wife were planning a keiki lu'au celebration next month for 11-month-old son Khelan James.

But early Tuesday afternoon a ground-shaking blast in Kalaeloa killed Sean Norva and sent three others to the hospital.

Authorities yesterday were still investigating what happened. The explosion occurred while Norva was welding at PSC Industrial Outsourcing Co.'s Campbell Industrial Park location.

Members of Norva's family were also trying to learn what happened when they visited the explosion site yesterday and spoke briefly with workers who found Norva's body after it was blown 100 feet from the blast point.

"We want to know what's going on," said Cheryl Guillermo, 29, Norva's half sister, after speaking briefly with workers at Bonded Materials, where Norva's body landed, next to PSC.

"He had a hole in the right side of his head, they said, and there was lots of blood," said Guillermo. "He flew all the way over here."

The workers said Norva had died by the time they reached him, the family said.

Gretchen Guillermo, 18, sobbed as she spoke about her older half brother.

"I looked up to him," she said. "He was kind of like a father figure to me, because he looked after me. He was always there for me and my family. He was a good father, and a good husband. He was a good brother, and a good son."

She said she gradually became aware Tuesday afternoon that something had gone terribly wrong at the work site, but didn't know what.

"I called my brother's best friend and I asked him, 'How's my brother? Is he OK?' And he said he didn't know because nobody was telling him anything."

When she spoke to the friend a few minutes later, she said, he was crying.

"And he said, 'He's gone, Gretchen, he's gone.' "

Sean and Kimberly married Sept. 22, said Gretchen Guillermo.

Kimberly Norva did not go to the site with her in-laws yesterday.

"I know she's hurting inside," she said. "But she's just trying to be strong for herself and her son."

Sean Norva had been welding around a 9,500-gallon tank at PSC Industrial Outsourcing Co., or Philip Services Corp., when he paused and asked a co-worker to adjust the welding machine, police said.

Seconds later, the tank exploded a few feet from Norva, launching him into a pickup truck parked at the adjacent business. The right side of the truck was caved in where Norva had slammed into it.

The tank was there to hold "used fuel oil," Honolulu Fire Capt. Terry Seelig said.

"That's what Philip Services called it," Seelig said. "It's basically the stuff that comes from machinery, like automobile or truck transmissions. It's classified as hazardous waste."

Norva and two of the three injured men worked for a PSC contractor called Panco, which did not answer its phone yesterday.

"Panco, the contractor, was hired to weld rails on a waste oil tank when an explosion occurred, killing one employee and injuring and hospitalizing three more," said Ryan Markham, a spokesman for the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, which had two investigators on the scene Tuesday and yesterday.

The DLIR investigation was proceeding along with separate police and fire department investigations yesterday.

After an autopsy, the Honolulu medical examiner's office yesterday listed the preliminary cause of Norva's death as "multiple internal injuries due to an industrial accident."

Services for Norva are pending.