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Friday, March 27, 2015

At Least 2 People Missing After East Village Explosion - New York Times




Slide Show|12 Photos

Fire and Rescue Crews Continue to Work in East Village



Fire and Rescue Crews Continue to Work in East Village


Robert Stolarik for The New York Times



At least two people were unaccounted for as firefighters continued their attempts to extinguish smoldering pockets of fire in Lower Manhattan one day after an explosion and a blaze reduced three buildings to rubble.


A drizzly gray dawn broke on the explosion site on Friday morning, with firefighters high up on a crane blasting a jet of water down onto the destroyed buildings at the corner of Second Avenue and Seventh Street. Scores of firefighters and workers from the utility Consolidated Edison were at the scene to conduct an investigation and, once the fire is completely contained, begin their search operation.



The explosion on Thursday afternoon ripped through a sushi restaurant at 121 Second Avenue, sparking an inferno that engulfed four neighboring buildings, with residents scrambling down fire escapes to safety and others helped by bystanders in daring rescues. The fire burned into the night, sending clouds of smoke billowing into the sky, while families searched for people who might be missing.




Play Video|1:50

Videos Show Fire in East Village



Videos Show Fire in East Village



Witness videos show the scene in the East Village after an explosion caused a fire on Second Avenue, affecting neighboring buildings.


March 26, 2015. Photo by Nancy Borowick for The New York Times.

One young man presumed missing was on a date at the restaurant, according to his family, while the police say the second missing person is a busboy. The authorities declined to officially identify him pending notification of his family.


At a news conference on Friday morning, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton said the two still unaccounted for were being “actively” searched for but cautioned that much work needed to be done.


“The search situation at the scene is a very complex one,” Mr. Bratton said, noting that it was similar to what investigators faced after a gas explosion in East Harlem a year ago.


Workers need to decide what to do with the rubble once the buildings are fully taken down, he said, and whether they should examine it on the scene or off-site.


He said by taking it to a location on Randalls Island investigators “can examine it more carefully if in fact we do determine that we actually have people that are actually missing.”


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Robert K. Boyce, the department’s chief of detectives, said that concerns over other individuals who may have been trapped were still being vetted.


“There’s about six others,” he said. “However, they were not inside as far as we know right now.”


A short time later, a cadaver dog was brought to the site.




A Facebook photo of Nicholas Figueroa, who was missing as of early Friday morning.

Mayor Bill de Blasio toured the scene Friday morning.


“I really admire the work you did getting people out safe,” Mr. de Blasio told a group of firefighters. “I admire the way you guys handled it. I know this was a ‘expect the unexpected,’ huh? We really appreciate it. It was a job well done all around.”


At least 19 people were taken to area hospitals for injuries and four remained in critical condition. Those with the most serious injuries, officials said, seemed to have been hurt during the initial blast.


The investigation into the explosion’s cause was focusing on plumbing and gas work being done at the restaurant, Sushi Park.


There was apparently no current work permit on file with the city for plumbing work to be done at that site, according to public records. Con Edison workers had visited the location just an hour before the explosion and found the work to be deficient.


At the time of the explosion, Sushi Park was continuing its lunch service, with diners taking advantage of the half-price deal of the day.


Witnesses described how the powerful explosion ripped through the restaurant, saying there were several minutes before the fire swept through that building and then neighboring buildings. During the brief window of time between the explosion and the spread of the fire, at least a dozen people escaped or were helped to safety.


Firefighter Mike Shepherd, 47, who is with Squad 41 based in the Bronx, was off duty eating at a nearby restaurant when he heard the explosion. He ran to the scene.


“As I got closer to the corner I could feel the concussion bounced off the building across the street and kind of hit me in the chest and I said, `Oh man, it’s a big one.’ Then I looked and I turned and I see the whole building is out in the street and people laying there, and I said, ` Oh man, this is bad.’”



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The fire started at 121 2nd Ave., set off by by a possible gas explosion in a restaurant where plumbing and gas work was being done.




OPEN Graphic



He sawbodies sprawled on the ground; mostly Asian men, looking cut and beat up, he said.


In his recollection of the event, they could not hear. He waved to them with his hands. “How many missing?” he shouted. “How many at work today?”


He knew right away one was missing because they said six: He counted only five bodies.


Mr. Shepherd went up the fire escape and climbed floor by floor. At the building’s second floor, the floor was buckling. People on the ground began yelling for him to get down. He continued his ascent to the fourth floor, yelling, “Anyone here, anyone here?”


“Now, it started, now it’s lighting up all over,” he recalled. “I went up. I said I got to see, let me go up. I got to the top floor, pulled the window down, yelled in there, and I didn’t see anybody or hear anybody.


He looked down at the street and saw other firefighters racing to the scene, slowed by cars that had been abandoned in the street.


By the time he got to the top of the building, some eight minutes had passed since the explosion, and the fire was gathering in strength. Mr. Shepherd was taking in too much smoke and the heat was growing unbearable so he made his way back to the street, by which point the battalion chief was organizing the fight against the blaze.


As he climbed down, he remembered thinking that he was glad he wore cotton pants.


“Because if I’m going to burn, I don’t want polyester,” As firefighter converged on the scene, people on the street looked on stunned, trying to process what was happening.







Stunned onlookers meanwhile were trying to process what was happening.


“It was the loudest and most intense explosion I have ever heard,” said Tony Klinger, who had seen people in the restaurant just before the blast. “I thought it might be a bomb, some kind of terrorist attack. The whole inside of the storefront, of the restaurant, was outside on the sidewalk where I had just walked.”


Nicholas Figueroa, 23, had gone to Sushi Park for a lunchtime date.


He has not been heard from since, according to his family.


His date, they said, was being treated for her injuries at Bellevue Hospital Center. She told her family that they were there when the place exploded and was swallowed by flames.


“I don’t know what to do,” Mr. Figueroa’s brother Tyler, 19, said early Friday outside of a makeshift Red Cross center in the East Village. “We’re just praying that they find him.”


The family fanned out across Manhattan on Thursday afternoon to search for Nicholas. Tyler walked to a nearby hospital while his father, also named Nicholas Figueroa, and a cousin sought the help of the police. But there was no trace of him.


At the end of a long night of searching, his weary parents returned to their home on the Upper East Side early Friday, hopeful that their son might have returned while they were away.


“My father is not stable, because he’s crying so much,” Tyler Figueroa said. “The police said that they’re looking into it, but we just want to know how this could’ve happened.”


The only thing the family knows for sure is that Nicholas had just paid his bill for lunch and was most likely just about to leave.


A bank statement they accessed shows that he used a debit card to pay $13.04 to Sushi Park.



Reporting was contributed by Nate Schweber, Liam Stack, Nikita Stewart and John Surico. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.





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