COLEVILLE -- Most families returned to a military housing complex outside a remote U.S. Marine training base in Northern California on Sunday, two days after a propane gas explosion that killed a Marine's wife and critically burned two other people.

A total of 38 families were displaced from the military neighborhood in the Mono County town of Coleville that serves the U.S. Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center, where Marines train for mountain operations.

Twenty families had returned by late Sunday, and 18 remained displaced, Marine Corps spokesman Capt. Nicholas Mannweiler said.

The explosion destroyed only one house at the center of the blast, but left 11 uninhabitable, Mannweiler said.

But the complex has exactly 11 vacant housing units that those families can move into, he said.

The remaining seven families will return based on their own needs and timing.

The woman killed in the blast was Lori Hardin of Hudson, Iowa, the 31-year-old wife of Gunnery Sgt. Greg G. Hardin, military officials said. The Marine Corps public works planner from Tuolumne, Calif., and the couple's two children were not hurt in the Friday night explosion.

Two other blast victims, a Navy corpsman and his wife, were flown to hospitals with serious injuries including third-degree burns.

The corpsman was treated at Renown Regional Medical Center in Reno, Nev., and was released Saturday. His wife remained in critical condition at the University of California, Davis Medical Center, though her condition was improving, Mannweiler said.

The couple has asked that their names not be released, Mannweiler said.