Potential clues are emerging about what might have caused that deadly gas explosion in East Harlem a year ago, as the National Transportation Safety Board released thousands of pages of documents from its ongoing investigation. NY1's Lori Chung filed the following report.
NTSB documents provide the first look at the underground pipes at the center of the investigation into last year's deadly building explosion in East Harlem.
One picture shows a space between the connector that links the gas main in the street and the line that delivered gas to a nearby building. Another shows a separate crack in that connector itself.
The explosion leveled 1644 and 1646 Park Avenue last year, killing eight people and injuring nearly 50 others.
Wednesday, the NTSB released more than 150 documents, including a January report that found that the certification of the contractor who installed the faulty pipe connection had lapsed, and that the gas main was not pressure tested to federal standards because of a state exemption.
Investigators also revealed that city transportation crews conducted road work in front of the buildings just days before the blast after finding a depression in the street.
There are also new details on the critical minutes before the explosion. Documents show that a neighbor called Con Ed at 9:06 a.m. to report a gas odor, but the customer service rep's computer froze. The information was finally entered at 9:13, and a Con Ed mechanic was dispatched at 9:15, but he was four miles away and didn't arrive until 9:39, nine minutes after the blast.
Another issue: at 9:19, a Con Ed staffer contacted the fire department to check out the gas odor but got confused about the address and promised to call back. The FDNY, though, was not called until after the blast at 9:30. Firefighters arrived at the scene three minutes later.
There are no conclusions in this report, so we don't know why there were cracks in that piping. The NTSB also is not passing judgment, at least not yet, on how that complaint of a gas odor was handled or whether a faster response might have made a difference.