July 18, 2007

Steam pipe explosion caused by failed infrastructure

From this evening's news conference:

Cause: “There is no reason to believe whatsoever that this is anything but a failure of our infrastructure,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at his news conference tonight. “What appears to have happened for some reason or another a 24-inch steam pipe broke. The steam pipe was installed in 1924 and there’s speculation that the most likely thing, cause of the pipe was cold water getting into the pipe and cold water apparently causes these things to explode.”

Injuries: One fatality (cardiac arrest;) and 20-some civillians injured, some seriously; three or four fire fighters received minor injuries.

Frozen zone: 40th to 43rd streets and Vanderbilt to 3rd Avenue.

Lingering threat: “The big fear that we have is there may or may not have been asbestos released," Bloomberg said. "We will take the precaution and assume there was. We should know in an hour or so.”

Transit: The shuttle between Grand Central and Times Square is not running and the 4/5/6 Lexington Avenue line is skipping many stations. See the latest from the MTA. Metro North is running into Grand Central.

Outages: Verizon lost some service. All gas mains are OK. No buildings are without power.

Earlier: Grand Central evacuated after explosion; not terror

July 18, 2007 08:24 PM in Midtown, Transportology

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