On March 12, 2014, at about 9:30 in the morning, two buildings by 116th Street and Park Avenue in East Harlem exploded. Twenty minutes earlier, someone had called Consolidated Edison (ConEd or Con Edison) and reported smelling gas.
Eight people died and dozens were injured. Those who died were either burned or crushed. It was a tragedy of unimaginable magnitude.
Below is a schematic of the apartment buildings that were leveled and the plastic gas pipes thought to be the cause of the explosion.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has been investigating the explosion for the last year and is about 3 months from issuing a final report. This week it opened its docket on the explosion, releasing about 3000 pages of documents.
The following are some of the findings:
- Con Edison replaced an eight-inch gas main made of cast iron, in use without incident for 120 years, with a plastic pipe in 2011.
- Con Edison connected this new section of the gas main, now plastic, to one of the destroyed buildings, 1642 Park Avenue, with a two-inch-diameter plastic pipe, called a service line.
- NTSB found high concentrations of gas in the ground in front of 1642 Park Avenue where the gas main was plastic.
- NTSB found a separation where the plastic gas main connected to the plastic service line for 1642 Park Avenue.
With the gas source determined, NTSB continues to look into how the separation happened.
One focus is the installation of the pipes. Under federal law, certain gas pipes need to be pneumatically pressure-tested when installed to make sure there are no leaks. This was not done by Con Edison, according to NTSB documents. Instead, the new gas main was visually inspected and tested for leaks with a soap solution.
In addition, the contractor, Hallen Construction, that fused the pipes for ConEd was not up-to-date on its qualifications to do this work with the company. This certainly will be significant evidence in personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits against the company, even though, according to NTSB, Hallen Construction was qualified to fuse pipes for National Grid, another gas utility in New York City.
NTSB also gathered documents pertaining to road work done by NYC transportation employees on March 9, 2014, just days before the explosion. They repaired a roadway depression in front of two buildings, 1644 and 1646 Park Ave.
Gas Explosion Lawyers
Our attorneys help people with personal injury and wrongful death claims against gas companies. They are frequent speakers at legal seminars and have been interviewed and quoted by The New York Times, CNN, Associated Press and others. Attorney Fred Pritzker is the founder of the firm.