Department of Transportation Alternatives truck has traffic violence explosion

 

LIC Post

 

An explosion stunned lunchtime crowds along Vernon Boulevard in Long Island City Wednesday afternoon.

A truck from the city’s Department of Transportation was parked on Vernon near 47th Avenue when it caught fire and exploded just after 1 p.m. on July 5. The four DOT employees who were working on pothole repairs in the Long Island City area parked their truck and went to a nearby restaurant for lunch. They noticed the vehicle smoking and it eventually caught fire before ultimately exploding, causing the evacuation of several stores and restaurants along the corridor.

None of the four DOT employees were injured in the blast.

“Safety of our employees and others is a top priority and we will investigate today’s truck fire,” a DOT spokesman said.

Astoria man blows up his apartment

 

 

 PIX News

 

Parts of an Astoria block were evacuated Tuesday and a man taken into custody after police found "precursor materials" for an explosive at the scene of a house fire.

Officials said the resident of the home's bottom floor — where the fire originated — was taken into custody and transported to a local hospital for evaluation. Police described him as "emotionally disturbed."

Flames broke out at a home on 19th Street near Astoria Park on Tuesday afternoon, officials said. The bomb squad was requested for a suspicious package at the scene.

At the scene, officials found chemicals and other hazardous materials, as well as books and manuals regarding military explosives and booby traps.

While officials did not find a "completed improvised explosive device," the fire could have created a much more serious situation due to the hazardous nature of storing the chemicals near each other, officials said.

Video showed police take a shirtless man into custody. He was found hiding behind the home.

Police said once the hazardous materials are removed from the scene and taken to a secure location, neighbors with homes

Gov's gonna blow up the bridge

From CBS 2:

Cuomo met with the team building the new Kosciuszko Bridge, an outdated 78-year-old span that gives new meaning to the term traffic tie-ups. Yet as the $555 million first phase nears completion, the Governor tells CBS2 that blowing up parts of the bridge is exactly what he’s going to do at some point this summer.

The governor says the demolition will save seven to nine months.

When the project is completed in 2020, it will actually be two bridges connecting Brooklyn and Queens — one in each direction. Luckily for commuters, their relief comes in April because when the first bridge is done, traffic will be rerouted and the old bridge will go up in smoke.

Defective cables cause frightening explosions

From CBS 2:

A series of manhole explosions rocked a Queens neighborhood Monday, damaging several cars parked cars and leaving dozens without power.

Just before 11 p.m., an electrical fire shot blue flames out of a manhole on Queens Boulevard between 67th and 68th avenues in Forest Hills.

Some people who live nearby captured one of the blasts on video. In a matter of minutes, two more explosions sent smoke billowing into the air.

Con Edison officials told CBS2 the blasts were caused by defective cables underground.

“Then all of a sudden I saw huge pieces, I couldn’t tell if they were — if they were metal or concrete, but I saw three huge pieces fly,” said Ben Benyamin.

That airborne debris landed on parked cars, cracking windshields and crushing hoods. It took the FDNY nearly two hours to extinguish the raging flames underground.

Call it what it is, Bill!

From ABC:

New York City's mayor said an explosion in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan Saturday night that injured 29 people was an "intentional act."

The explosion happened around 8:30 p.m. Saturday in front of 131 West 23rd Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues.

Twenty-eight of the people hurt suffered minor injuries, and one person's injuries are being described as serious. All are expected to survive.

Debris landed on nearby cars and shattered some windows. Two cars on West 23rd Street and Sixth Avenue had their back windows blown out. An 8-year-old who was in the back seat was injured.

The incident was captured on multiple surveillance cameras.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said that while the blast appeared to be intentional, it does not appear to be linked to terrorism.

Can someone explain to me how there can be two bombs planted in the middle of Manhattan and the mayor is saying that it's not terrorism? Does he think we're stupid?

Landlord of explosion site finally arrested

From the NY Post:

Two building owners and three contractors were arrested Thursday morning on charges including manslaughter​, assault and criminally negligent homicide​ over the East Village blast that destroyed three buildings and killed two people nearly a year ago.

Petty corner-cutting and blatant greed caused the blast, officials said.

Sharing the blame, officials ​accused, are a penny​-​pinching building landlord, ​her son, ​her contractor, and the contractor’s unlicensed plumber, who installed a tangle of dangerous and illegal gas connections that they hid from Con Ed behind a locked basement door.

And check out this case from Michigan:

Federal officials charged a suburban Detroit restaurant owner and his wife Friday with harboring immigrants who were in the U.S. without legal permission after a fire at a house he owned killed five employees about two weeks earlier.

Roger Tam, 55, was arrested Thursday and appeared Friday in U.S. District Court in Detroit. His wife, Ada Lei, 48, also has been charged, but has not been arrested because she is hospitalized for an undisclosed reason.

Five Mexican nationals lived in the basement of the home owned by Tam in an upper middle-class neighborhood in Novi, northwest of Detroit, while working at Tam's restaurant, Kim's Garden. The Jan. 31 fire has been ruled accidental and possibly caused by smoking; a smoke detector in the basement had been disabled. The basement had stairs to the first floor but windows made of glass block, which would prevent any escape in an emergency.

The charge that Tam and Lei face carries a 10-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.

Illegal conversions and illegal gas hookups kill. It's time to throw the book at these people.

Strip club firebombed

From PIX11:

The search is on Thursday for whomever threw a Molotov cocktail through the window of a strip club in Queens, the same club visited by a New York Knicks player before he was robbed at gunpoint and shot in the knee.

Police said a mystery attacker threw the fiery device into CityScapes Gentlemen’s Club, located on 58th Street in Maspeth, Queens.

The blaze was extinguished by fire crews and no one was hurt, police said.

Arson investigators are on their way to the scene and an investigation is underway.

Last Thanksgiving's exploded house still not repaired

From the Queens Chronicle:

Almost a year after an explosion blew a gaping hole in the rear of a house in South Ozone Park last Thanksgiving, a full-vacate order is still placed on it and there have been complaints of illegal construction going on there, according to city Department of Buildings records.

The house, located at 107-55 108 St., was the scene of an explosion due to the misuse of a stove in an “illegally renovated setback apartment,” FDNY officials told the Queens Chronicle last December.

A full-vacate order was immediately placed on the property by the DOB, due to the structural stability being affected, which at press time on Nov. 24 was still effective.

A Chronicle reporter saw last Friday that the hole in the back of the house had been fixed, though any work done to the house may not have been done lawfully.

There have been two complaints of illegal construction on the house, city records state, the first of which stated there was no building permit posted on March 17.

TV explosion damages Glendale homes

From CBS New York:

Residents of Glendale, Queens were complaining Wednesday night that a planned explosion for a TV drama show damaged their homes.

As CBS2’s Tracee Carrasco reported, the neighborhood around Doran Avenue is usually quiet. But residents said on Tuesday afternoon, it was anything but.

Dozens of Doran Avenue residents said they had their homes rocked by a controlled, planned car explosion during the filming of the NBC drama “The Black List.” A massive orange fireball shot into the sky, following a cloud of thick, black smoke.

And now, some say the explosion damaged their homes.

The whole East Village is illegally converted

From the Wall Street Journal:

City inspections of more than 50 buildings in the East Village following the fatal March 26 explosion and fire at 121 Second Ave. have turned up violations related to gas lines, fire safety and illegal construction, city records show.

The blast, which leveled three buildings and killed two people, is being treated as a case of suspected gas diversion, officials have said. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is investigating to determine if any criminal charges are warranted.

Two weeks after the blast, area residents remain concerned that problems that bedeviled 121 Second Ave. leading up to the explosion—a record of unlicensed construction work and building and housing violations—could be mirrored in their own buildings, some of which have records of complaints and violations going back years.

At one building across the street from the blast, gas has been shut off after inspections revealed construction without a permit and potentially illegal gas siphoning, records and interviews show. At another, Department of Buildings records show a violation for an improperly placed gas meter and new complaints alleging illegal boiler work, among other concerns.

Since March 26, the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development has issued violations at a number of buildings on the block, ranging from faulty locks, doors, handrails and windows to blocked fire escapes, lack of gas and failure to register as a multiple family dwelling with the department. One building was cited by the department for illegal use of the cellar as residential space, records show.

Recent complaints to the Department of Buildings for buildings on the block show concerns about unlicensed construction, fire hazards, and illegal conversion of space for bedrooms.

It's criminal

From the Daily News:

The heartbreaking farewell came as detectives looking into allegations that the explosion was caused by workers illegally tapping into the gas line were preparing to bring criminally negligent homicide charges against whoever was responsible.

“This is likely going to end up a homicide case,” a high-ranking police source told the Daily News. “The DA will probably bring it to the grand jury.”

The focus of the criminal investigation is building owner Maria Hrynenko and contractor Dilber Kukic, sources have said.

Both are suspected of tapping into a gas main meant to serve only a first-floor sushi restaurant to provide heat to Hrynenko’s tenants on upper floors. Kukic is no stranger to the law. He was arrested in October for allegedly trying to give a city inspector a $600 cash bribe to make two violations on buildings he owns on W. 173rd St. in Manhattan go away.

“No one's going to be charged for doing sloppy work, but if it can be proved that someone was told to do this, then it's a criminally negligent homicide,” the source said.

Everyone from Hrynenko and Kukic to the plumber who had been working at 121 Second Ave. at the time of the blast has been grilled.

“All of them got lawyers and they're all pointing fingers at each other,” the high-ranking source said.

Lots of unanswered questions remain

From Epoch Times:

An hour before an apparent gas explosion sent flames soaring and debris flying at a Manhattan apartment building, injuring 19 people, utility company inspectors decided the work being done there was faulty.

The powerful blast on Thursday in the East Village caused the collapse of three buildings and fire damage to a fourth, the fire department said. It left four people in critical condition, more than a dozen others injured and one family searching for a loved one.

Firefighters worked through the night to put out pockets of fire, pouring large volumes of water over the rubble, a fire department spokesman said Friday morning as a steady rain fell.

He said when a building collapses it takes much longer — even days — to put out all the fire.

About 200 firefighters and medical staff remained on the scene.

The blast caused three five-story buildings to collapse within a few hours of each other, the spokesman said. A fourth, seven-story building, suffered extensive fire damage.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said preliminary evidence suggested a gas explosion amid plumbing and gas work inside the building that collapsed was to blame. A plumber was doing work connected to a gas service upgrade, and inspectors for utility company Con Edison had been there, company President Craig Ivey said. But the work failed the inspection, partly because a space for the new meters wasn’t big enough, Con Ed said.

I didn't see any permits for any type of gas line work, but I'm not sure what is required when a plumber is involved. The contractor was already in deep doo-doo before this happened.

More violations for house that went "boom"

From the Queens Chronicle:

A Thanksgiving Day explosion at a South Ozone Park house was caused by the misuse of a stove inside an illegal apartment, according to Fire Department officials.

“The location of the explosion was an illegally renovated setback apartment,” an FDNY spokesman said in an email. “The explosion was caused by misuse of a stove on the premises.”

According to city records released last week, the owner of the house was given two violations by the city Department of Buildings on the day the back of the first floor spontaneously exploded.

The house, located at 107-55 108 St., was illegally altered from a one- or two-family dwelling to accommodate four or more families, DOB records state.

An illegal canopy at the rear of the house was also placed by the homeowner, according to records.

The homeowner, identified by the DOB as Boonness Harrychand, is scheduled for a hearing at the Environmental Control Board, the tribunal body that administers penalties to people who violate DOB regulations, on Jan. 13.

Harrychand did not respond to requests for comments on the violations by press time.

The DOB did not respond to requests for comment on whether or not gas work was done inside the illegal units.

The Atlas Park fireworks show will go on

From the Daily News:

Civic leaders want to douse the annual Independence Day fireworks display on July 5 at the Atlas Park shopping center because they fear a spark could fly into a nearby chemical warehouse, triggering a disastrous explosion.

Robert Holden, from the Juniper Park Civic Association, and Kathy Masi of the Glendale Civic Association are asking the city to pull the permit for the popular pyrotechnics show, even though the owner of the Independent Chemical Corp. insisted there is no danger from a professional display.

James Cervino, a marine biologist who lives College Point, said the plastic drums are “vulnerable to superstorms, flooding and fire, especially if there is a fireworks show occurring in the area.”

“All it takes is one shell going awry,” he said.

Company president Jonathan Spielman said he is concerned about vandals breaking into his facility and kids playing with fireworks in the surrounding streets — but not the Atlas Park show.

Apparently the compromise is to allow the show but have HazMat on standby at the site.

Gas leaks not all that uncommon

From the Daily News:

Six weeks before a fatal gas explosion destroyed two East Harlem apartment buildings, firefighters got a call about a gas odor at a small, wood-framed house on Staten Island.

With the Bravest still on the scene, the place blew up.

Three people were injured, including a firefighter and the homeowner who later said everything exploded when he opened his basement door. The entire neighborhood near Delaware St. in Dongan Hills had to be evacuated.

That was just one of 38 “incidents” stemming from natural gas leaks in New York City between 2004 and February 2014. In the last decade, gas leaks have resulted in three other fatalities and 12 injuries across the city. Several people were critically injured.

In 18 cases, gas ignited. In eight cases, the gas exploded.

There has been a really strong smell of gas on Himrod Street in Ridgewood in front of Grover Cleveland High School for years. Has anyone else noticed this? It's been called in many times but nothing changes.

Sad day in Harlem

From the Daily News:

In the months before a gas leak leveled two E. Harlem buildings, there were telltale signs of potential trouble.

Tenants say they complained repeatedly about strong gas odor in the buildings, making calls to 311 as recently as Wednesday morning.

And as of Wednesday, the city had yet to check to see if the owner of one of the doomed buildings had ever repaired a dangerous wall crack discovered in 2008.

Nine months ago a contractor installed a new gas line from the basement to the 5th floor in one of the buildings, and was allowed to sign off on his own work under a common practice known as “self-certification.”

At the time, the installation was “audited” by the city to ensure there were no leaks and as of Wednesday officials said there was no suggestion the new pipe caused the leak.

Be careful with those bug bombs!

From CBS New York:

A Queens man was recovering Monday from a major scare, from a wall that collapsed on him following an explosion in the apartment next door.

The explosion shook the building at 39-20 Greenpoint Ave. in Sunnyside, Queens, and blew out the wall between apartments 1B and 1A. The gaping hole measured 10 by 12 feet.

The bricks and stucco that collapsed in a pile injured a man, although not seriously.

“The gentleman was sitting on his couch and the wall came from 1B into 1A, and it actually covered him; landed in his lap,” said FDNY Chief Ed Carney.

Carney blamed the blast on a bug bomb.

Apartment dwellers have used the foggers known as bug bombs for years to get rid of roaches and other pests But fire officials said the problem is occasionally people forget to follow the safety directions printed right on the back on the box.

Typical warnings remind users to turn off all flames, pilot lights and ignition sources. Carney said the ignition source in the Queens incident was the gas pilot light.

Utility service was cut to much of the building for more than an hour during the emergency response.

Building inspectors determined there was no dangerous structural damage, but posted vacate orders on both units until the wall that was blown out is rebuilt.

The history of Tommy Huang

From the Queens Chronicle:

Tommy Huang, the controversial developer from Flushing, has been in the news for more than three decades — known for building and damaging properties throughout Queens and probably more than anything, destroying the RKO Keith’s Theatre.

Although Huang made several attempts to ruin the Keith’s, it was a longstanding oil leak for which he was criminally charged in 1997.

Huang emigrated from Taiwan in 1969 with his wife, Alice Liu, a daughter of the wealthy owner of Taiwan’s Haw di-I Foods and Bull Head Barbecue Sauce. He broke ground in Flushing in 1979 on a five-family house.

The developer went on to construct high-rises around Queens Boulevard and five others in Flushing. He was first applauded for helping to rebuild Flushing, but controversy soon erupted.

In 1982, Huang wanted to buy a site off Main Street to build a 16-story condominium. After a bank refused to sell it to him, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into a restaurant there, destroying several properties. Soon after, Huang increased his bid on the location and the property was sold. He said he did not know anything about the bomb.

House with illegal gas line goes boom!

Daily News

From the Queens Courier:

Three people are left injured after a house fire in Richmond Hill.

According to the FDNY, a call came in on Saturday at approximately 1:01 a.m. for a fire at 87-40 124th Street. Upon arrival, firefighters found the fire in the basement of the one-story home. The fire was under control by 3:58 a.m.

One person was taken to Nassau University Medical Center with serious burns and two people were taken to Jamaica Hospital with minor burns.

According to the FDNY, the cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Wow, I wonder what could have happened? I'm sure no one had any idea that there was a problem.

Wonder why this was dismissed...

Two-story 6-unit building, eh? Dept of Finance has this listed as a 4-unit building.

Bug bomb building illegally converted

From the NY Post:

The Chinatown building blasted apart by pesticide bombs had been illegally subdivided and was using illegal gas and plumbing lines, city building officials said.

The slipshod structure at 17 Pike Street — which went up in a fiery explosion just before 1 p.m. yesterday, injuring at least nine people — has been ordered emptied of all tenants.

“A full vacate order was issued for the property due to the presence of illegal conversions in the building,” said Dept. of Buildings spokeswoman Kelly Magee.

DOB inspectors found illegal partitions that compromised exits on the second through fifth floors of the five-story prewar building, according to a newly-filed complaint, which also cited the exploding bug bombs as causing the partial collapse of the structure.

The investigation also revealed “illegal plumbing work and gas lines” in the “shaking/vibrating” building, which houses a beauty parlor and bus company on the ground floor, and is listed as an “18 family dwelling” in city records.

It is unclear how many people were living in the building, or how many subdivided apartments there were. But the Red Cross yesterday had 61 people from 17 Pike – 46 adults and 15 children – register for emergency assistance.