SOMEONE MAY HAVE improperly tapped a gas line before an explosion that leveled three apartment buildings and injured nearly two dozen people, Mayor Bill de Blasio said today, as police searched for at least two missing people.
“There is a possibility here that the gas line was inappropriately accessed internally” by people in one of the destroyed buildings, but officials need to get access to its basement to explore it further, said de Blasio.
The number of people injured in yesterday’s blast rose from 19 to 22, with four critically injured.
Search for the missing
Police were searching for at least two people: Nicholas Figueroa, a bowling alley worker who had been on a date at a sushi restaurant in the building where the destruction was centered, and Moises Lucon, a worker there.
Authorities also were exploring whether a third person might be unaccounted for, Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said.
Preliminary evidence suggests an explosion amid plumbing and gas work inside the building was to blame.
Inspectors with utility Consolidated Edison had been to the East Village building to check on ongoing work to upgrade gas service.
The utility said the work didn’t pass inspection, so gas wasn’t introduced to the line, and inspectors gave instructions and left at around 2.45pm. Con Ed said inspectors didn’t smell any gas.
But at around 3pm, the sushi restaurant owner smelled gas and called the landlord, who then called a general contractor, Boyce said. No one called 911 or Con Ed, however, de Blasio said.
The contractor, Dilber Kukic, and the owner’s son went into the basement and opened a door, and then the explosion happened, burning their faces, Boyce said.
Gas line
The building had an existing gas line intended to serve the sushi restaurant; the work underway was to put in a bigger line to serve the entire building, Con Ed President Craig Ivey said.
As for whether the apartments were getting gas from the existing line, “That’s a great question,” he said.
We’ll have to find out, through the investigation, what’s going on there.
Figueroa graduated from Buffalo State College in December with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and a minor in intelligence analysis.
He has been working at Bowlmor Chelsea Piers for the past few months as a front desk attendant and laser tag attendant.
Tyler Figueroa said his brother and his date were paying for their meal when the blast occurred. The date, who is in the hospital, remembers only stumbling outside before losing consciousness.
I just pray my brother shows up.
Firefighters used high-powered water towers to douse the wreckage. Rubble was still strewn across parked cars, and a menu from the sushi restaurant and other debris were scattered across the surrounding streets.
The blast echoed through the city’s arts community, destroying Sopranos actress Drea de Matteo’s apartment — she posted photos on Instagram of “a hole where my NYC home of the last 22 years once stood”;
It spurred the cancellation of five performances of the propulsive show Stomp, which is at a theatre near the site.
Kukic, who’s facing unrelated charges of bribing an undercover investigator posing as a housing inspector, declined through his lawyer to comment on the circumstances surrounding the explosion.
Kukic was treated and released from a hospital, said his lawyer, Mark Bederow.
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