BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | With a thunderous boom, a building at Second Ave. and E. Seventh St. partially collapsed around 3:15 p.m. on Thursday.
According to report, up to 12 people were injured, three critically, including individuals with serious burns. It was reported that the bottom two floors of the building, 125 Second Ave., were gutted by the blast.
After the explosion, fire broke out and consumed the building, and spread to the building to the north. More than 100 firefighters battled the roaring blaze to bring it under control.
Black smoke initially filled the sky as smoke eaters rushed to the scene of the collapse, in the second building north of the intersection’s northwest corner.
Calling from the scene, Anna Sawaryn told The Villager she had been walking her nephew Lucas Halushka, 10, home from school when they heard an enormous explosion.
“It was really, really loud,” she said. “We heard it all the way up on 13th St.”
They rushed down six blocks to where all they cloud see was a thick cloud of smoke at the location.
Sawaryn said she saw firefighters put up a ladder on E. Seventh St. and climb up to the top of the corner building and that other firefighters also climbed up the fire escape on the building’s Second Ave. side.
“Somebody said it was a gas leak,” she said. “I was told they were doing gas work in the building. They evacuated it for a while, but let some people back in.”
A Fire Department spokesperson, speaking shortly after the explosion, hurriedly told The Villager, “We are on scene of a potential building collapse.”
The corner building, which is still standing, was formerly home to Love Saves the Day, the quirky toy-and-novelties store, which closed several years ago.
The collapsed building next door had a sushi restaurant and a longtime grocery store in its commercial storefronts, Sawaryn said. The building to the north of that, into which the flames spread, has Pommes Frites, a Belgian fries place, on its ground floor.
“The sushi restaurant was where the explosion was,” she said.
Speaking into her cell phone, as sirens blared as more fire trucks were rushing to the scene, she said intrepid local residents helped deal with the disaster during the initial chaos.
“The nice thing is that community members jumped in and started diverting traffic,” she said.
With reporting by Tequila Minsky
