Two buildings located at 116th Street and Park Avenue in East Harlem, New York, collapsed partially after a massive explosion Wednesday morning sent thick clouds of smoke across upper Manhattan.
"For weeks we've been smelling gas," Ashley Rivera, 21, told the NY Daily News. "We saw people flying out of the windows. Those are my neighbors."
The newspaper cited a law enforcement agent as saying that a gas explosion was likely to blame.
According to reports, residents of a nearby site complained of gas at 9:13 a.m., and the energy company Con Edison was on its way when the explosion occurred.
ABC News reported that while 11 people sustained varying degrees of injuries, a number of people were trapped inside the rubble. One of the injured has been shifted to Harlem Hospital with severe trauma; the hospital is expecting one more victim.
Witnesses said that prior to the collapse of the two five-story apartment buildings, which housed a piano shop and a Spanish church, they heard a sound that appeared to be an explosion around 9.30 a.m. Flames and smoke were also seen billowing from the street.
NY Daily News quotes Michelle Jackson, a 29-year-old witness, as saying that she saw a severely burned 8-year-old boy being taken care of by frenzied pedestrians. She described a "loud bang" and "explosion" around 9:30 a.m. Medics also treated another woman on a stretcher, while stunned bystanders lingered around the scene with dust on their coats, she said.
The entire area was in a chaos as smoke gushed from the building and large amounts of litter filled the sidewalks throughout the area. The blast was so potent that it blew out the windows of nearby buildings while the fire spread to adjacent structures.
One witness told the Daily News he watched a man run into one of the buildings as it burned, only to be thrown out after the blast.
Police have declared a Level 2 mobilization. Metro-North service has been suspended temporarily as debris from the building landed on nearby elevated train tracks.
