{"id":5760,"date":"2014-03-12T18:23:23","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T18:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=5760"},"modified":"2014-03-12T18:24:05","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T18:24:05","slug":"new-york-buildings-explode-and-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=5760","title":{"rendered":"New York buildings explode and collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sdasd\"<\/a>Two multi-use buildings have collapsed in New York’s east Harlem neighbourhood, killing at least two women and injuring more than a dozen other people.<\/p>\n

The buildings, located on the east block of 116th street and Park Avenue, exploded and collapsed at about 13:00 GMT on Wednesday, according to police.<\/p>\n

“It was an explosion and a building collapsed,” a spokesman for New York police department told the AFP news agency, giving no further details.<\/p>\n

New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio later said that the explosion “destroyed two buildings” that sat above a ground-level church and a piano store.<\/p>\n

A witness who lives across the street told CBS news that he saw the building on fire and that his relatives living further away also felt the blast.<\/p>\n

“I saw a lady running with no shoes on. It was crazy,” he said. “First of all, I thought it was an earthquake. I got calls from my family who felt it too and that was all the way up town.”<\/p>\n

Gas-like odour<\/strong><\/p>\n

The New York fire department told AFP that 168 fire fighters had responded to the explosion at the six-storey buildings.<\/p>\n

The fire department said they believed the collapse was triggered by a gas explosion, but investigations were ongoing as rescue workers continued to search for people in the rubble.<\/p>\n

“Con Edison, which is one of the gas companies here, said that they were responding to a gas-like odour just before the explosion occurred,” said Al Jazeera’s Morgan Radford, reporting from the scene.<\/p>\n

“Just before the explosion a resident in a neighboring building complained of a gas odour to Con Edison, officials said.<\/p>\n

Alfonso Quiroz, a spokesman for the gas company said they “dispatched a crew two minutes later and the crews arrived just as the explosion occurred.” He added that Con Edison is “looking at any connection”.<\/p>\n

Michael Parrella, a spokesman for the fire department, said: “It’s a very active scene. It’s a very chaotic scene.”<\/p>\n

All train services in and out of Grand Central Terminal were cancelled until further notice due to the explosion.<\/p>\n

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two multi-use buildings have collapsed in New York’s east Harlem neighbourhood, killing at least two women and injuring more than a dozen other people. The buildings, located on the east block of 116th street and Park Avenue, exploded and collapsed at about 13:00 GMT on Wednesday, according to police. “It was an explosion and a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":5761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[38,14],"class_list":["post-5760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}