Video footage, click link below.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07182007/news/regionalnews/steamvideo.wmv

Quoted Text

STEAM PIPE EXPLOSION SENDS SHOCK WAVES THROUGH CITY

A titanic rush-hour explosion near Grand Central Terminal today sent thousands frantically running from flying debris and a plume of thick white smoke that billowed as high as the 77-story Chrysler Building.

Police quickly declared that the steam pipe explosion, which blew out windows on the 16th floor of office towers and left scores of people and abandoned cars covered in a rusty-colored mud, was not terrorism related.

Mayor Bloomberg tonight said that one unidentified male suffered a heart attack as a result of the explosion and died. The Mayor also said "20-odd others" were injured to varying degrees.

Bloomberg reported that the 24-inch steam pipe, which was built in 1924, may have exploded because of cold water from recent heavy rainfall.

A geyser of steam and earth erupted from the center of 41st Street between Lexington and Third avenues after the explosion. The bellowing rumble that could be heard coming for at least half an hour after the 5:57 p.m. blast had New Yorkers fearing the worst.

"This is a flashback to 9/11. I tell you I'm a paramedic," said 44-year-old Rocco Cassella, who helped triage people hit by bricks and suffering steam burns.

"I was dragging people down the street because the rocks were falling everywhere. Whatever blew was blowing out the window, there were rocks and rubble everywhere."

Sources said three men were at the Cornell Weill burn unit and in critical condition.

Paramedics set up makeshift triage centers up around Grand Central, as the more seriously injured were transferred to Cornell Weill, Bellevue and Roosevelt hospitals.

Bruce Teitelbaum, a former Giuliani administration official, was having a meeting in his offices on the 10th floor of the Chrysler Building when the explosion happened.

He said the building exits onto Third Avenue close at 6 p.m. so they were locked in while people were pouring into the lobby.

"People were screaming, 'Open the doors! Open the doors!'" he said.

"It was like a movie. I've never heard anything quite like it. We saw this huge plume of smoke ... the alarm in the building went off, people started screaming."

Teitelbaum said he had "never seen anything like it. The smoke seemed to be propelled out of the ground ... and then there was a horrible smell, like a sulfur kind of smell.

"Our thought was something blew up in Grand Central, (that) there was a bomb ... it was a real panic. People were really terrified. It was like this huge incredible loud rumbling.

Subway service on the 4, 5, 6 lines and the 42nd Street shuttle was suspended because of the explosion. Anxious riders rushed up onto the streets from the subway station exits as cops tried to calm the crowds and direct traffic.

Several midtown office buildings surrounding the site were evacuated and the streets were flooded with workers wearing pinstripe suits and covered in mud.

Ramone Rondon, 58, was working on the 17th floor of the 370 Lexington Avenue when he heard the explosion.

"Everyone was running," said Rondon, who was covered in mud from head to toe.

"We took the stairs and when I came out of the door, it was everywhere. Stones were flying all over the place. Some people got hurt."

Florent Martens, 48, works in a real estate office at 110 East 42nd St., said he had just gone outside for a cigarette at the back of the building on 41st St. when he heard the boom.

"I had almost finished the cigarette. Then all of a sudden, there was this big explosion. There were rocks and bricks everywhere," he said. "I felt stones coming down around me and I started diving."

He said he started to run and knocked over a woman, who he had to help up.

"I thought at first it was a building collapse and with all the news you hear about terrorism, I was thinking about that.

"It was a big ruffling sound. It was like something exploded inside of a mountain."

Heiko H. Thieme, an investment banker in Midtown, had mud splattered on his face, pants and shoes.

He said the explosion was like a volcano.

"Everybody was a bit confused, everybody obviously thought of 9-11."

Con Edison workers canvassed the area, and police were wearing gas masks on the street.

Darryl Green, who works with AT&T, said he could feel the buildings shake, so he and his colleagues dashed down 30 flights of stairs.

"As we came out onto the street, the whole street was dark with smoke," he said.

A small school bus was abandoned just feet from the spot where the jet spewed from the ground.

Debbie Tontodonato, 40, a manager for Clear Channel Outdoor, said she thought the rumble from the explosion was thunder.

"I looked out the window and I saw these huge chunks that I thought were hail," she said. "We panicked, I think everyone thought the worst, thank God it wasn't. It was like a cattle drive going down the stairs, with everyone pushing. I almost fell down the stairs."

Advertising executive Saul Gitlin, 44, and his co-workers watched the explosion from their 23rd-floor window.

"I felt the explosion and my building started to shake. We saw huge crowds of people running toward the west side," he said. "We couldn't see what they were running away from."

http://www.dailygazette.com

Quoted Text

   NEW YORK — With a blast that made skyscrapers tremble, an 83-year-old steam pipe sent a powerful message that the miles of tubes, wires and iron beneath New York and other U.S. cities are getting older and could become dangerously unstable.
   The steam conduit that exploded beneath a Manhattan street at the height of rush hour Wednesday, just a block from Grand Central Terminal, was laid when Calvin Coolidge was president and was part of a system that began providing energy to city buildings in 1882.
   Investigators are still trying to determine what caused the explosion, but some experts said the age of the city’s infrastructure was a possible factor. Pipes don’t last forever.
   “This may be a warning sign for this very old network of pipe that we have,” said Anil Agrawal, a professor of civil engineering at the City College of New York. “We should not be looking at this incident as an isolated one.”
   From Boston to Los Angeles, a number of American cities are entering a middle age of sorts, and the infrastructure propping them up is showing signs of strain.
   DePaul University transportation professor Joe Schwieterman said his city of Chicago, where much of the infrastructure dates to the early part of the 20th century, is now faced with tough choices on what to fi x first.
   “The aging infrastructure below the streets is an enormous liability for the city,” Schwieterman said. “We know it needs modernization, but the cost is staggering. We’re forced to pick our battles wisely.”
   Thousands of miles of underground water and sewage pipes are nearing the end of their expected life, sometimes with a bang and a flash flood.
   Electrical systems, operating with components that are decades old, have been groaning to handle record power demand.
   Parts of New York were plunged into darkness for a week last summer when a series of power cables failed in Queens, and much of the Northeast was blacked out when power transmission systems failed across several states in 2003.
   In New York and Boston, aging sidewalk utility panels were blamed for delivering electric shocks to pedestrians and pets in wet weather.
   The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that it will take $1.6 trillion over the next five years to get the nation’s roads, bridges, dams, water systems and airports into good condition.
   But replacing old parts in a labyrinth of cables, tunnels and piping, often extending hundreds of feet down, is rarely easy.
   “The fact that all of this stuff is crowded together in a very small space can also make accidents worse,” said Rae Zimmerman, director of the Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems at New York University. “When one thing goes, other things go. When you have a water main break, it will wash out a street and break a gas line.”
   In New York, home to the largest steam system in the world, steam is pumped through more than 100 miles of mains and service pipes to customers such as the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center. It is also widely used by dry cleaners and hospitals.
   Just how much of a factor aging infrastructure was in Wednesday’s steam main break is unclear.
   The utility that operates the steam system, Consolidated Edison, insisted its equipment is in good shape.
   The company said it is spending $20 million this year on upgrades and has been removing older cast iron components, eliminating asbestos from manholes and installing improved joints less likely to fail.
   “I don’t think there is any reason to worry. I think that you see that these pipes generally perform fi ne,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in the aftermath of the blast, which injured dozens, some seriously. One woman died of a heart attack while trying to flee.
   Officials speculated that rainwater or water from a main break may have infiltrated the pipe and the sudden interaction between cold water and super-hot steam burst the conduit.
   Steam explosions, in fact, are rare and have decreased in recent years. The last major explosion in New York, in 1989, killed three people.
   Smaller steam systems have also operated largely without mishap in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore, although a pipe explosion in the nation’s capital near the White House badly injured two workers in 2004.
   Con Ed said it has an inspection program to look for potential problems. Some components of the system are examined about every six weeks.
   Buried steam mains like the one that exploded, however, are generally not inspected because doing so usually requires digging up the street, Con Ed spokeswoman Joy Faber said.

We dont have to worry about things like that in Rotterdam.......we dont have any.....however, here will a bandstand for Mr.Spitzer for consolidation......