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8th Body Found In Rubble From East Harlem Building Explosion
By
Jen Chung
Published Mar 14, 2014
Modified Mar 14, 2014
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By
Jen Chung
Published Mar 14, 2014
Modified Mar 14, 2014
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The Fire Department and other crews are still at the site of Wednesday's explosion in East Harlem, where two buildings were destroyed from an apparent gas leak. An eighth body was found in the rubble yesterday. The FDNY has said, "We are still in a search and rescue mode," but a law enforcement source told the Post, "There’s always a chance. People like hope, but its not reality."
So far, seven victims have been identified: Griselde Camacho, 44; Carmen Tanco, 67; Rosaura Hernandez, 22; Andreas Panagopoulos, 43; Rosaura Barrios Vazquez, 43; Alexis Salas, 22; and George Amadeo, 44. Three people are still missing.
Less than half the debris has been searched at 1644 and 1646 Park Avenue, and firefighters were working through yesterday's freezing weather to sift through the wreckage and to fight fires that had popped up. One firefighter likened it to "working on Ground Zero again. The smoke in your face, digging through the rubble for bodies. It’s a tough job." Another described it as a "smoldering inferno."
Residents had complained that they smelled gas for days, weeks and even years, but many never called to make complaints (city officials are urging residents to take it seriously). On Wednesday, Con Ed received a call about a gas leak near 1652 Park Avenue at 9:13 a.m. and dispatched a crew. At 9:31, the FDNY received a call about an explosion and when firefighters arrived at 9:33 a.m., the buildings were destroyed. The Con Ed crew arrived a little after the explosion. The NY Times reports:
Two agents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation saw the blast blow out the front of the piano store located at 1646 Park Avenue, according to two city officials briefed on their statements.
The agents, whose vehicle happened to be at a red light almost directly in front of the buildings, said the building at 1644, which housed the Spanish Christian Church, then collapsed pancake-style, with each successive floor quickly giving way and crumbling into the floor beneath it, the officials said.
The adjacent building, 1646, was next, the walls of each floor falling like dominoes, each floor then giving way to the next.
“It certainly looked like 1644 went first, and the theory is that it must’ve emanated from the basement of 1644, based on the nontechnical investigation, based on structural damage and witness accounts,” one of the two city officials said.
The National Transportation Safety Board is also at the site, waiting to investigate gas line. Board member Robert Sumwalt said, "This is catastrophic. It’s devastating and we’ve had, obviously, a loss of life. So, it is very hard to be here. But it’s part of our job to find out what happened so that we can keep it from happening again." Notably, he said, the pipe "is still intact. That’s unlike other pipeline accidents that I’ve been to where the pipe is thrown out of a crater."
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east harlem
east harlem explosion
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gas leak
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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