MOMENTS AFTER A NEW YORK CITY office building maintenance worker told people not to evacuate the building, a huge explosion in a sidewalk elecrtical vault sent a fireball up several stories and scorched the front of the building, showering debris along the entire block.
New York Times / de Rouge photo
Office workers started smelling a strong, burning plastic odor around 10 am Thursday morning, but nobody bothered calling 9-1-1 until more than 30 minutes later. FDNY arrived on the scene at 10:45 and started looking for the source of the smell and the rapidly-building smoke. They upgraded the alarm response and told the building officials to evacuate the premises. The New York Times reports:
Upstairs, according to people who work in the building, fire alarms started going off around 11. But they described a public address system announcement that said there was no need to evacuate.
Some left anyway — among them Tami Woronoff, who works for Grit TV. She said that a maintenance person on the sidewalk told her: “There’s no problem. Go back upstairs. You can take the elevator.”
She did, and minutes later, the explosion rocked the building.
Despite the recorded messages, everybody then fled the building.
The Associated Press filed this video report:
Employees at a Radio Shack store on the ground floor told the New York Post that ConEd, the electric utility, was working in the vault on Monday. City building inspectors searched through the building that afternoon and determined that there was no structural damage and it is safe for occupancy. Investgators from the city and ConEd are seeking for the cause of the transformer to explode. There have not been any reported injuries.
Read the full New York Times story HERE.
Good thing the engine pulled forward a little farther.
New York Post / Austin Riggs
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