NY Daily News – August 21, 2015
by Andy Mai, Denis Slattery, Alfred Ng
A thunderous gas explosion ripped through a Bronx high school Thursday night, injuring three workers — one critically, authorities said. The walls blew at 8:09 p.m. at the John F. Kennedy High School Campus on Terrace View Ave. in Marble Hill, firefighters said.
“It was a thunder, a really loud explosion,” said Addae Hicks, 21, a custodian who was on the school’s sixth floor near the heart of the explosion in a science lab. “You could smell a lot of gas. I thought the building was about to go off.”
A gas line exploded after a contractor hit it with a blowtorch, Hicks said.
“Honestly, I thought it was a bomb,” said Jason Osorio, a 27-year-old worker who ran out of the rumbling building. “It was scary. It was like a movie.
“I’m happy to be alive,” he added.
The shockwave set off car alarms and rattled windows for miles around, according to witnesses. Glass shards, splintered wood and white ash littered the grounds where kids are supposed to return to school in three weeks.
Seven contractors were in the building when it ruptured, police sources said.
A 36-year-old worker suffered severe burns that covered his body, while 38-year-old and 53-year-old co-workers suffered burns to their hands and bodies.
“A very troubling evening for residents in Marble Hill. They felt a blast, they felt the building shake, and what we see here at JFK High is a shocking scene,” said Mayor de Blasio, as he stood outside the school.
The blast left a gaping hole in the side of the school and debris rained down onto the adjoining rooftops and the sidewalk below. Hundreds of firefighters responded.
The three victims were taken to Jacobi Medical Center, one in critical condition and two in serious condition.
The fireball tore through the school’s fourth, fifth and sixth floors and obliterated at least three classrooms, sources said.
“This building has been seriously damaged, although the structural damage is very limited,” FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said at the scene.
The campus, comprising seven smaller schools, is in a Bronx district although the surrounding neighborhood is part of Manhattan. The more than 4,000 students in grades 9 through 12 are due back Sept. 9.
The work on the science labs was part of a project by the School Construction Authority through a private contractor, the mayor said.
The explosion was the second largest gas-related blast to rock the city this year. In March, an East Village inferno caused by a gas explosion killed two people, injured 25 others and destroyed four buildings.
In 2014, eight people were killed and dozens of others injured after a blast in East Harlem near Park Ave.
With Ben Chapman
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