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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Four apartment buildings in New York’s East
Village neighborhood caught fire from an apparent gas explosion on
Thursday and three collapsed, injuring 19 people, authorities said.
The
blast shortly after 3 p.m. sent flames leaping into the sky and rocked
the residential area in Manhattan. Bloodied victims ran from the
buildings, collapsing on the street, witnesses said.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told a news conference that preliminary evidence indicated it was a gas-related explosion.
A Fire Department spokesman said late on Thursday that three of the four buildings had collapsed or partially collapsed.
The
fourth building “is still involved with some pockets of fire, it’s
still an active scene. Investigation is still ongoing,” he said.
Nineteen people were hurt. Four, all civilians, were in critical condition, the spokesman said.
A New York police spokesman there were no reports of anyone missing.
The Con Edison utility
said in a statement that its inspectors had been at the site on
Thursday to evaluate work a building plumber was doing in a building for
a gas service upgrade. The work failed to pass inspection, it said.
The
seven-alarm blaze in the neighborhood of small businesses, restaurants
and apartments involved more than 250 Fire Department personnel.
Moishe
Perl, 64, who owns Moishe’s Bake Shop nearby, said he heard an
explosion, ran outside and saw the lower floors of a building start to
crumble.
“Most of the people were running out of the building and
climbing down the fire escape,” he said, while others were helped out of
windows by passersby.
Ben Mackinnon, 28, said he was drinking coffee in a cafe when he heard an explosion from across the street.
“The explosion was big enough that the door of the cafe blew open,” Mackinnon said.
He
said he saw several bloodied men emerge from a sushi restaurant where
the explosion appeared to originate. One of them fell to the pavement.
Shameem
Noor, a cashier at the Veselka restaurant about a block away, said he
heard the blast and saw three or four people fall to the street.
The
four buildings contain 49 apartments, according to a spokesman for the
American Red Cross at the scene. The ground floors were occupied by
small eateries.
A relocation center for displaced residents was set up in a nearby elementary school, the Red Cross spokesman said.
(Reporting
by Sebastien Malo and Ellen Wulfhorst; Additional reporting by Ian
Simpson in Washington and Laila Kearney in New York; Writing by Ian
Simpson; Editing by Sandra Maler, Eric Beech and Peter Cooney)
