Actually, that's kind of a weird circumstance...he had landline service...but just didn't have phones plugged in until the explosion? Hmmm, I'm assuming that one tidbit left out of this story is that their power was knocked out (or turned off), too, which then killed their cordless telephone...which is why they had to plug in a corded telephone to dial out.

But back to the original question--I don't think it's too surprising to have a situation where the cell service gets knocked out while the guy's landline service still works. Don't forget that a cell tower is basically a radio node of a big landline network of its own. If you knock out a cell tower or disrupt the phone line connecting to that tower, you can lose service in an area. Or maybe the tower lost power when the neighborhood went dark and it's possible that it didn't have any power backup to keep operating, like a battery or generator.