USA: New Yorkers flee Grand Central area during rush hour after an underground steam pipe explodes causing huge clouds of smoke and steam

An underground steam pipe exploded in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday (July 18), shaking buildings, creating a towering geyser of debris and sending pedestrians fleeing in scenes reminiscent of the September 11 attacks. Officials in New York and Washington promptly ruled out a terrorist attack. One person died and about 20 people were injured, some seriously, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "What we do know is this evening, at about 5:57 a call came in from an explosion on 41st and Lexington. And there is no reason to believe whatsoever that this is anything other than a failure of our infrastructure. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that there is anything involved with terrorism or criminality," Bloomberg told a news conference. "In terms of injuries, sadly we believe - and the numbers may change into the evening, that one person died from cardiac arrest. And that person we believe to be at Bellevue Hospital. There were three or four firefighters with minor injuries treated at the scene and 20 odd people, civilians, who were injured, some seriously, some not," he added. Boiling, brownish water and steam gushed geyser-like at least 120 feet high (36 metres) out of a crater about 20 feet (6 metres) wide on Lexington Avenue at 41st Street, one of the busiest areas of New York City near the Grand Central transportation hub. Pedestrians sprinted from the scene, many with cell phones glued to their ears, some crying. Some were covered in white ash and soot. Andrew McLaren, a marine who was in the area at the time of the explosion initially thought it was a terrorist attack. "I was walking down and I see everybody running. It's my first - I'm a marine, I'm in the sergeant marine corps so my first thing is I'm going to run towards to see what happened because I thought it was a terrorist attack. So I get down there and I see like I don't know about eight, nine stories of steam coming up. So I go down, I show my I.D. to the cops and I'm like 'how can I help, I wanna get down there', I'm trying to find gear from a fireman so I can get down there and see what's going on, I'm thinking it's a bomb," he told Reuters. Rocco Cassdatta, a physician assistant who helped an injured woman from the explosion witnessed the event. "I was helping the people come out of the building, then all the windows started breaking around me and the rubble started coming down. Whatever it was, there was smoke but there was also steam - a mountain, the loudest damn thing I've heard in my life," he recounted. The pipe of 24 inches in diameter was installed in 1924, Bloomberg told a news conference, and may have burst because cold water somehow entered it.

ITN Source | July 19, 2007

Tags:. .witnessed. .assistant. .mayor. .injuries. .cops