At least eight people were killed in the gas explosion, followed by the collapse of two apartment buildings in New York City. Sixty-eight people were injured.
Smoke on the charred remains of one of the two buildings which collapsed in a violent explosion in New York. The accident left at least two dead and around fifteen injured, police reported. (Wednesday March 12, 2014)
AFP
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–New York City Police said at least two women were killed in the crash at the intersection of 116th Street and Park Avenue in upper Manhattan. Seventeen other people were taken to hospital. (Wednesday March 12, 2014)
AFP
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–AFP
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Rescuers discovered Thursday night in New York, nearly 36 hours after the disaster, a new body in the rubble of two buildings that collapsed Wednesday after a gas explosion. The death toll has now reached at least eight people.
Sixty-eight people were still injured, New York police said. The mayor of the city, Bill de Blasio, recalled that there were also still people missing.
«Spanish Harlem»
The accident hit the Mexican immigrant community hard. The neighborhood affected by the explosion, located in upper Manhattan, has a large Hispanic population and has been renamed “Spanish Harlem”.
The mayor assured that the rescuers would continue their search “for days”. “An investigation is being carried out in parallel to find out what happened,” he said.
Damage over a kilometer
Thursday, braving the wind and the cold, a hundred firefighters as well as police officers and rescuers were still at work in the still smoking rubble of the 15 apartments, which included the two buildings which collapsed.
The explosion was felt within a mile radius of Manhattan Island. The blast destroyed the windows of several surrounding buildings and threw debris into adjacent streets.
New York City lives in fear of explosions since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center Twin Towers, which killed nearly 3,000 people. Just before the explosion, a gas leak was reported to Con Edison, the gas supplier.
Posted: 03/12/2014 3:26 PM
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