လူႏွစ္ဦးေသဆံုးၿပီး ၁၈ဦးဒဏ္ရာအၿပင္းအထန္ရရွိကာ ေနာက္ထပ္လူအမ်ားအၿပားေပ်ာက္ဆံုး ေနတဲ႕ အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံ မန္ဟန္တန္ မီးေလာင္မႈ

RangonNewsDaily: March . 12 .2014
Two Dead, 18 Injured, Several Missing in NYC Building Explosion
Two people were killed and 18 injured today when a suspected gas explosion tore through a building in Manhattan's East Harlem neighborhood, collapsing at least part of the structure, authorities said.
“This is a tragedy of the worse kind because there was no indication in time to save people,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said, confirming that 18 are injured, with different levels of injuries. “There will be a search through the rubble of the building once the fire has been put out.”

"They were right there," one source told ABC News, referring how close the two deceased victims were to the explosion.

A New York City official said the casualty "numbers are going to change."

Plumes of thick smoke engulfed the area around the building at 116th Street and Park Avenue after residents reported hearing a loud explosion around 9:30 a.m. and the smell of acrid smoke was overpowering. The first 911 call came in at 9:31 a.m. and firefighters were on the scene two minutes later, Fire Commissioner Sal Cassano said.

PHOTO: A image from Google Streetview, seen left, shows a building that collapsed in East Harlem, New York on March 12, 2014. At right, debris is seen being cleared by the fire department. 

Explosion Rocks Manhattan, Causing Building Collapse

Con Edison was responding to a report of a gas odor at 1652 Park Ave., officials said. The call came in at 9:13 a.m. from a resident of that building who indicated the odor may have been coming from outside the building. 

Two Con Edison crews were dispatched at 9:15 a.m., officials said, noting they arrived just after the explosion occurred. The street is served by an 8-inch low-pressure gas main, utility officials said. 

There were a total of 15 residential units in the two buildings, officials said.

There is "no indications of foul play,” de Blasio said.

“I was standing in my room when I heard the explosion and the building shook at the same time," said Rosario Valderdo, who lives in the apartment building next door. “The windows were shattered and I grabbed my dog and went outside. The building had collapsed and there were people underneath it and they were trying to take them away from there.”

Google images of the building show two commercial storefronts on the ground floor with residential apartments above those storefronts.

The FBI was on the scene, but there is no indication of terror or crime, authorities said.

Shattered windows in nearby storefronts showed the extent of the explosion.

“It was 9 o'clock and the explosion woke me up. The building shook, my mother’s window fell in,” said neighbor Adam Ocasio. “You could see the smoke and debris as soon as you got outside.”

“We are expending every effort to locate each and every loved one," de Blasio said.

There are more than 250 firefighters working at the scene, as well as dozens of pieces of equipment to clear the rubble.

Any relatives who are looking for info about their loved ones can call 311 until a special hotline is set up, officials said.

Residents in the area are posting pictures of the building on social media.

abcnews ::--kolatt(PBDN)
RangonNewsDaily