CLEVELAND — An explosion rattled Cleveland and its suburbs on Wednesday, destroying three houses, damaging at least 12 others and injuring at least 11 people, though none seriously, authorities said.

The blast around 8 a.m. demolished an apparently unoccupied home, leaving a hole. Only the chimney was left of one adjacent home, and another had just one wall standing.

Authorities evacuated the street where the explosion occurred, located on the city’s east side, and were checking for leaking natural gas. City and federal authorities were trying to determine the cause of the blast.

Fire Department spokesman Larry Gray said the injuries were minor, mostly burns. MetroHealth Medical Center said it received six adults and five children from the scene.

Neighbors told firefighters that the house that blew up was vacant, Gray said.

People living in suburbs at least 10 miles away reported feeling the explosion.

Neil Durbin, a spokesman for Dominion East Ohio, said crews were canvassing the area for gas leaks and shut off service to 17 homes as a safety measure.

A public school located in the neighborhood closed for the day before students arrived.

A blast in January destroyed a house on the city’s west side and damaged more than 50 others. A neighbor with two arson convictions has been charged in that explosion.

Two Elyria men were arrested after one allegedly attempted to pass bad prescriptions and another led police on a foot chase yesterday.

Seljan

Burnside

Robert Seljan, 48, of Elyria, was arrested for attempting to pass a prescription under a dead person’s name, according to Elyria police. He was charged with two counts of deception to obtain dangerous drugs and trafficking in Schedule II drugs.

Brett Burnside, 28, of Elyria, was arrested for contempt of court, obstructing official business and other outstanding warrants.

Officers were called by the Walgreens on Cleveland Street in Elyria about 5 p.m. yesterday by the county drug task force, according to a police report.

A male, later determined to be Seljan, was attempting to pass a prescription for Oxycontin at the drive-through, according to police. Walgreens contacted police and stated they would recontact when the man returned to pick up the prescription.

They called back at 5:20 p.m. to report the man had returned and was waiting in his vehicle at the drive-through window.

As officers pulled behind the vehicle, a teal-colored hatchback, a passenger, later identified as Burnside, opened a passenger-side door and fled on foot.

Officers, along with a police dog chased him and apprehended him near Cleveland Street and Beverly Court. Seljan, who was driving the vehicle, was also taken into custody.

Officers searched the vehicle and found a prescription filled less than an hour earlier at Drug Mart in Elyria for 120 Xanax pills along with a bottle of Excedrin Migraine pills. Officers also found doctor’s paperwork advising Seljan how to take his medications as well as two unfilled prescriptions.

A Walgreens pharmacist told police Seljan was attempting to fill a prescription for a “Jacqueline Borgsteadt,” who was listed as “deceased” in their computer system.

The pharmacist said Seljan asked how much the prescription would cost and was told $514.49. He told her he needed “to go downtown” to get money and would return. The pharmacist later turned over to police the $515 in cash Seljan gave her for the prescription.

In the meantime, the pharmacist said she received a call from a pharmacist at CVS that Seljan had just dropped prescriptions for Ambien CR and Lipoderm Patch in the name of the same deceased person.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Jake Westbrook opened the game with a four-pitch walk, and worked around traffic for most of his six innings. He still didn’t have full confi­dence in his sinker, dropping his arm angle to offset his insecurity.

What Westbrook did get was a win, his first since reconstructive right elbow sur­gery. No matter how he got there, that sure feels good.

Russell Branyan homered twice in support of Westbrook’s first win in two years, lifting the Cleveland Indians to an 8-2 victory over the backpedaling Kansas City Royals on Tuesday night.

“It’s nice to get that first win and pitch well doing it,” said Westbrook, who had Tommy John surgery in June 2008. “It wasn’t real pretty, but I put up some zeros and only gave up that one run. I had baserunners all night, but made pitches when I had to.”

Westbrook (1-2) used his sinker and an occasional drop-down delivery to induce 13 groundouts and held the Royals to five hits for his first win since April 8, 2008, against the Angels.

More photos below.

Branyan provided the power, hitting a tworun homer off Brian Bannister (1-3) in the second and a solo shot off Joakim Soria in the ninth for his first multihomer game in exactly three years. Jhonny Peralta added a two-run double, Austin Kearns scored three runs and had an RBI, and the Indians collected 10 hits to win consecutive games for the first time in a month.

“He (Westbrook) gave us a chance to get our lineup going,” Indians manager Manny Acta said.

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This matchup featured the bottom of the AL Central.

The last-place Royals were coming off a 3-8 season-long trip that ended with a four-game sweep at Texas. The lowlights included too many walks, shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt’s fine-inducing botched popup and an inexplicable failure by the entire team to notice a runner advancing to second without tagging up.

The Royals followed the dismal trip with another clunker, getting an average outing from Bannister, an almost-predictable bullpen blowup and base-to-base hitting to see their losing streak reach six games.

“I think everybody is putting a lot of pressure on themselves in every aspect of the game,” Bannister said after his 100th career appearance. “We’re playing tense out there.”

The Indians have only been marginally better. Plagued by swing-and-miss hitting, Cleveland tumbled down the standings with three wins in 12 games. Cleveland struck out 86 times in an eight-game homestand and entered Tuesday as the third-worst team in baseball at scoring and hitting homers.

The Indians ended a five-game skid Sunday against Detroit by getting five RBIs from their No. 7-8 hitters, and got production from the middle of the lineup to beat the Royals in the opener of an eight-game road trip.

SANDUSKY — This year’s big new attraction won’t be ready when Cedar Point opens for the season this weekend.

The park is delaying the launch of its new Shoot the Rapids water ride by two weeks, until May 29. CEO Dick Kinzel of Cedar Point’s parent company, Cedar Fair, said Monday that the boats for the $10.5 million flume ride were made too long and didn’t go over the hills properly. He says the boats are being modified so they’ll work.

Kinzel describes the issue as more of an engineering problem than a safety problem.

The rest of the park about 55 miles west of Cleveland is scheduled to open Saturday.