Help cutting out peices of a picture in Final Cut Express.

[natatos]

Ok so I'm trying to make a house explode and I have an idea that like I just make a few layers and cut each layer out and key frame them each to look like an explosion. and I was wondering if I could do that but instead of like 10 layers it would be one and I could just extract it multiple times. I don't really expect that to be possible. But something that would be even better is if someone new where I could find some free stock footage of a house exploding.