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Mayor de Blasio Provides Update on Building Collapse in the East Village

March 27, 2015

Mayor Bill de Blasio: I want to give everyone an update on this terrible tragedy that occurred in the East Village yesterday. I first want to say, for all of us who are working to address so many concerns and so many people, our hearts go out to the families of all who were affected and to the people of the neighborhood who have seen such horrible disruption the last 24 hours.

A lot of people right now feeling the effects of this tragedy and our thoughts and prayers are with them. And we are working non-stop to try to address the many issues now in the neighborhood. I’ve visited this site this morning – obviously, total devastation of three buildings. One other suffered tremendous fire damage. You rarely see a scene of such devastation in the middle of a city like this as the site is still smoldering. The fire department is actively fighting the fire on the site.

This was, you know, 24 hours ago a vibrant bustling street and today people are dealing with the aftermath of this tragedy. The response by all of our first responders was exceptional. I want to emphasize this, the fire department arrived on the scene within minutes. This was a very complicated, dangerous situation. Four buildings deeply affected – obviously, the surrounding buildings potentially at risk; an ever changing and very dangerous dynamic for all of our first responders. I particularly want to thank FDNY, our firefighters, and their leadership responded brilliantly in the midst of, again, a complex and dangerous situation.

I’ve talked to a number of the firefighters; I’ve talked to some of their officers, and many of them said that this was one of the toughest fires they had seen in a long time because of the nature of the explosion, and the way it undermined more than one of the buildings, and the threat of building collapse looming at all times. Notwithstanding that extraordinary challenge our firefighters did an amazing job of going through all of the buildings, addressing not just the fire but, of course, looking for signs of life, and doing so at great personal dangers themselves. So, the professionalism, the bravery, the courage of the FDNY were entirely on display in the last 24 hours. All of the other first responders working with FDNY did a fantastic job as well. A lot of people here representing a lot of the different agencies, I’ll acknowledge them in a moment but let me give you the overview.

Obviously, I will start as I did yesterday by saying, there’s an ongoing investigation. There’s a lot more we need to learn. We will not have all the facts until we can access 121 2nd Avenue fully, and particularly get into the basement area. That’s going to take time because of the amount of debris that’s been created. So, we are going to give you preliminary information and keep updating it as we go along.

Again, three buildings collapsed. The fourth very seriously damaged by fire. From what we know at this moment, and this is again preliminary, it appears to be a gas explosion but there’s a lot more we need to learn about the details. The fire, again, continues. Thank God it’s just smoldering at this point, but it can flare up some as the debris is cleared away. So, there’s going to be a very heavy FDNY presence as that operation continues. Once debris is largely cleared and the fire is fully extinguished then there will be the ability to do a full investigation, of course, a full clean-up of the area. That will take days, I want to emphasize at this point it will take days. We do not have a firm deadline for you yet but it will take, certainly, several days possibly as much as most of a week to get all of that debris out of the area and make the area entirely normal again. We’re going to be very cautious about how we handle the surrounding area; how we handle traffic and even foot traffic in the area. FDNY is going to make decisions based, of course, on safety and the clean-up operation when we can open up 2nd Avenue; when we can allow normal foot traffic, but I want people to keep their expectations low on that level because we have to do this very carefully. We have to make sure that the debris is cleared.

In terms of the human impact, and it is a very painful reality – 22 people injured. Thank God 18 of those injured do not have life-threatening injuries – four, however, have critical injuries. So, four of the 22 have critical injuries. At this moment, still no fatalities reported. Now, that being said, we have two people that we know for sure are unaccounted for. And there may be more, we are still gathering information but two people based on eyewitness accounts unaccounted for. We are continuing the effort to confirm that and seeing if there’s any other individuals that we need to look for.

All of our first responders, again, did an extraordinary job. This was very dangerous – six members of the FDNY were injured in this operation, again, thank God all were non-life-threatening injuries. People, of course, are deeply concerned about their loved ones and those who may have been affected, not just who lived in the buildings who may have been in the restaurant or may have even been walking by. Please call 3-1-1 if you either are trying to confirm the whereabouts of a loved one or if you have information to offer about someone who may be missing.

We have a center that has been set up to help anyone affected by this tragedy. It is now – it was at one location yesterday, it has now been moved to the Tompkins Square Library at 331 East 10th Street. A variety of services available for all those in need there including medicine, mental health services, the different things people need immediately. We’re also working, of course, to make sure there is temporary housing for all who need it. We provided temporary housing for 30 individuals, so far, out of the 84 people who have registered for a variety of types of help.

We’ll talk later on about the process of re-inhabiting a number of the buildings surrounding the site. There will be some obviously – some individuals who need long-term housing because their building is gone, and we will be working immediately to achieve not just temporary but long term housing for all those displaced. At this moment, 11 buildings with 144 residential units were evacuated. Again, some will be re-inhabited soon, others it looks like more likely on Sunday. We’re still fine-tuning that, again, in connection with safety considerations and debris removal operations. Department of Buildings will be inspecting all of the surrounding buildings to assure safety before any of them are re-inhabited. We have ongoing efforts by the Department of Health and the Department of Environmental Protection to monitor air quality and to monitor for any substances on the site at this moment. Department of Health reports that air quality has returned to normal levels in the surrounding area.

Our Department of Small Businesses Services is working with a number of businesses that have been adversely affected; obviously, some destroyed others damaged and obviously all of them not in a position to be open for business, so we’ll be working with them to help them out.

Very important for those who want to help the families that were affected by this tragedy, there is a number of ways to do so; one is through the Mayor’s Fund, which responded with great effectiveness after the East Harlem tragedy. We encourage people to donate to the Mayor’s Fund to help the families that had such a negative impact on their lives. Obviously, other charities are stepping in as well and we thank them.

Look, this will be an ongoing situation. We’ll be giving you a number of updates. There’s going to be a lot to learn in the investigation. There’s going to be a lot that we have to update people on in terms of the life of the neighborhood and how we can return it to normal. I hope all the people of New York City, while we feel pain over those who are right now fighting for their lives and all of the people whose lives have been turned upside down. I hope at the same time we appreciate that we are blessed by the finest first responders anywhere in the world. This is absolutely extraordinary, what our first responders did here and should be a cause for comfort in the midst of this pain.

The city – we’ve said it before but it’s fundamentally true – this city knows how to handle adversity. We never welcome it – we know it will come but we know how to handle it. People band together; people help each other out. A – great acts of kindness and acts of bravery yesterday. Not just our first responders on-duty; we had an off-duty firefighter who literally went into the danger off-duty, happened to be in the neighborhood, climbed up the fire escape externally to look into different apartments to see if there were any individuals in those apartments. So, answer the call even while off-duty and put his own life in danger. We had individuals who came and pulled a woman to safety – just bystanders who saw a woman’s life in danger and got her away from one of the buildings as it was collapsing. People stepped up and helped there fellow New Yorkers and it made a world of difference. And thank God we haven’t lost anyone yet and part of it is because of these extraordinary efforts. I want to say a few words in Spanish. I’m going to announce – introduce everyone who’s here and then call upon Commissioner Nigro and Commissioner Esposito.   

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

Okay, let me give you a sense of all of the people and agencies here; of course, our First Deputy Mayor Tony Shorris; you’ll here again from our Fire Commissioner Dan Nigro and our OEM Commissioner Joe Esposito in a moment; we have our Buildings Commissioner Rick Chandler, our Housing Commissioner Vicky Bean; we have Chief Leonard of the FDNY – Chief of Department; NYPD Chief of Detectives Bob Boyce; Deputy Chief of Manhattan Detectives, Bill Aubry. We have my senior advisor Gabrielle Fialkoff, who has the Mayor’s Fund among other things under her leadership. We have among – also from – I’m sorry – also from the NYPD, the Commanding Officer of Patrol Borough Manhattan South Assistant Chief, Bill Morris.  We have the Con Ed President, Craig Ivey, who we been working very closely with in the last 24 hours. And then we thank Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Councilmember Rosie Mendez, and State Senator Brad Hoylman all for being here.

Now, to give you a fuller update, our Fire Commissioner Dan Nigro.   

. . .

Question: I’m wondering if there is any progress. Obviously, it’s hard to get to the evidence down below under all that [inaudible]. Is there any progress in the investigation in terms of figuring out what could have gone wrong?

Mayor: The responsible answer is to say until we can see it with our own eyes it will be unwise to speculate too much. Again, the strong assumption is a gas explosion. We are waiting for details, there is a possibility here that the gas line was inappropriately accessed internally by people in the building. We don’t know enough yet though about the details of that.

Question: I wanted to clarify why Con Edison was there to inspect. Did someone call Con Ed and say we need an inspection? Was it a random inspection?

Mayor: I’ll give you a quick opener and President Ivey can come up and go into more detail, but the reason Con Ed was there had to do with previous work that had been done at the site that they were coming to see, as part of an on-going effort. It was not related to anything that happened specifically that day.

Question: And just to, sort of, include into the question – you reported yesterday, to us, that Con Edison – the work that was taking place appeared to be deficient.

Mayor: Correct.

Question: Are you comfortable or satisfied that Con Edison then leaving after determining that work is deficient is enough, or do they need to do more?  

Mayor: No, based on what we know now, and this is based on the debrief of the two Con Ed personnel who were there, it had to do with previous work being looked at. The problems were not safety problems. They’re workers were given instructions how to deal with the problem. There was no gas leak detected when the Con Ed workers were there. Again, based on the preliminary information we have, no report by the workers on the scene of having smelled gas. Obviously, they would have immediately had to act if they had. So, we understand it was pre-existing work that they found insufficient, but not because of safety issues.

Do you want to add?

Con Edison President Craig Ivey: That’s correct. Planned inspection of internal piping – there’s no gas introduced in this piping at this point. We’re inspecting it, so that we can introduce gas at a future point in time. So, these were engineering inspections. Again, our folks were there – they smelled no gas at the time.

Question: You dug a big hole on Second Avenue to access some kind of pipeline. Can you talk about what’s that all about?

Con Edison President Craig Ivey: We dug multiple holes around the area, so that we can access the main so –

Mayor: Just for clarity – since the explosion.

Con Edison President Craig Ivey: Post the event we dug multiple holes around the area so we could shut of gas to the area, to make it safe.

Mayor: So, gas is now shut off for the surrounding immediate area.

Jonathan?

Question: You said that two people were confirmed unaccounted for, you said there may be others, earlier today the [inaudible] put the number at six. Can you give us any sense into who these people are? Are these people who lived in the building, were in the restaurants, walking on the sidewalk?

Mayor: Again, it’s preliminary because we have to go through a full process to 100 percent confirm the situation of each person. So, I don’t want to go into too much detail, but if Chief Boyce – do you want to add?

Chief of Detectives Bob Boyce, NYPD: Sure. There were 42 names that were called into the IVIS. Basically, we have to vet each one. Two of those individuals we did know were in that location at the time. Alright, we’re seeking to find out where they are right now. Out of the 42 – outside of those two – we’ve vetted down to one person who’s unaccounted for right now. We don’t believe that person is – was inside at the time however, we’ll continue. But we do have two individuals – we released their names, that we believe were in there. And we have statement s from witnesses, who were present, who put them in the restaurant – the sushi restaurant. 

Question: [inaudible]

Chief Boyce: Correct.

Mayor: No, that’s not a confirmed one because we’re not [inaudible] of the person who was on the scene. Correct?

Chief Boyce: That’s correct.

Mayor: That’s fine. Okay. Yes.

Question: Mayor, just wondering if you can explain what you mean by the gas line being inappropriately accessed by someone in the building. And also, just curious to which contractor Con Ed met with yesterday because our understanding was [inaudible] should there have been any work going on there?

Mayor: Okay, I’ll have Con Ed speak to who they met with. Again, very preliminary information and we can’t conjecture, we only have very preliminary information. But there is a possibility that that’s what happened, that there was an inappropriate accessing of the gas line. Until we do a full examination we can’t say conclusively. In terms of who your folks –

Con Edison President Craig Ivey: Not more to add. I don’t recall the name.

Mayor: Okay, we’ll get back to you on the exact name they met with.

Question: Are you ready to release the plumbers name yet? Can we get that?

Mayor: Are we in a position to do that? Anyone know, Joe?

Commissioner Joseph Esposito, OEM: It’s fine.

Mayor: You can?

Commissioner Esposito: [inaudible]

Mayor: Okay.

Commissioner Esposito: There’s two individuals that we know right now that met with Con Ed at that time, that is [inaudible] and Dilber Kukic. Dilbert Kukic was the general contractor. He was injured in the blast. He has helped us quite a bit in our investigation right now. He has received some burns and he is admitted into one of the hospitals right now. He is the general contractor. He met with Con Ed, with this other gentlemen, Mr. Eionitz, who is the subcontractor – the plumber.

Question: Can you spell those last names?

Commissioner Esposito: I’ll have to give it to you in a second because I don’t think have it right either.

Mayor: Okay. Yes, in the back.

Question: Mayor, can you tell us exactly at the time of the explosion what type of work was going on in the basement? Who was in the basement? And then specifically to follow up on Mr. Kukic, the work that he did in that basement – was it recent or was it last year?

Mayor: Okay, we can tell you what we know from – and chief will explain what we know so far. But again, a full picture of who was where and how things actually unfolded is still going to take a full investigation. We don’t ever want to take initial; information and treat it as conclusive until we have all – the whole picture. But based on what we’ve heard from these two individuals and what we can divulge. Go ahead.

Chief Boyce: Here’s the timeline, very quickly. They met at 2 pm with Con Ed workers to discuss renovations in the building, alright. Con Ed workers at that point gave them instructions as [inaudible]. And we’ll go forward with that – and exactly what they were. Nothing substantial from what I understand. At which point Con Ed and the individuals left at about 2:45 in the afternoon. At about 3’o’clock in the afternoon – 15 minute later – the owner of the Sushi restaurant smelled gas and he called the owner of the building, at that point, who then called the contractor.

Question: At the time of the explosion who was in the basement?

Chief Boyce: The contractor, Mr. Kukic, as well as the owner’s son. Both of them were injured. Actually, Mr. Kukic helped excavate – pull out the owner’s son at the time. Both of those gentlemen received facial burns.

Question: More specific on the [inaudible] potentially a gas line had been accessed inappropriately –

Chief Boyce: We can’t go anywhere near that until we excavate and see what’s down there.  So, I can’t – It would be pure speculation and it wouldn’t serve the investigation at all.

Question: What led you to believe that that might have happened? 

Chief Boyce: Again, I’m not telling [inaudible]. We have to go down before we make any more statements.

Mayor: Based on a variety of sources that’s a possibility, but we again [inaudible] will have a final answer based on the full investigation.

Go ahead.

Question: This was brought up yesterday, this is the second explosion in a year. What concrete steps is the city taking to address the infrastructure that may have led to the explosion?

Mayor: It’s impossible to say it’s based on infrastructure at this point. That is a factual statement.

Mayor: We are still, of course, in the previous explosion, waiting for a final report by the federal agency that’s doing the investigation. We cannot say at this moment that it is an infrastructure-related problem. It may have been some other type of cause. In this instance, we don’t even have the site cleared to be able to get the whole picture. So it’s just premature – these are two individual instances, and what we need to figure out is exactly what happened. I will say now – I said yesterday – I will keep saying it – we constantly learn one painful lesson across all these incidents. People have to call 9-1-1 when they smell gas or call Con Ed. There is no substitute – calling anybody else is not the same as calling 9-1-1 or calling Con Ed. Those are the only two places that can immediately act to address the problem. So, we had a tragedy a year ago, and I think a lot of people did learn a very powerful lesson, and we – you know, we say that knowing that people were lost, families were torn apart, but at least, at the same time, some lesson was learned that I hope has saved people’s lives in the meantime. But now we see another tragedy where, tragically, 9-1-1 was not called, Con Ed was not called. We have to get this message across to all our people that there’s just no holding back. The second you smell gas, call 9-1-1 or call Con Ed.

Question: [inaudible] ongoing investigation, but when you say it was inappropriately accessed, does that mean [inaudible] irresponsibility or perhaps some criminal [inaudible]?

Mayor: Again, it’s too early to say. It’s based on everything we’re seeing that that’s a possibility, but we’ll know a lot more in just a few days.

Question: Can you describe – you and the fire commissioner have described it as this very challenging fire to fight. Can you talk about what was it about the fire? Was there something feeding the fire? Is it the age of the buildings? Why was it such a challenge?

Commissioner Daniel Nigro, FDNY: Those are – those are two good reasons. Certainly, it was a gas-fed fire, preceded by an explosion that blew a few people across the street, so the integrity of the buildings – the first two buildings that collapsed – were damaged immediately. So when the members entered the buildings to do their search, they were entering buildings that were very badly damaged, and the fire was building rapidly because of the gas escaping from the basement. So they had – they had to enter damaged buildings under extreme fire conditions, which made this fire grow very rapidly and bring that building down very quickly.

Question: How long did it take for them to actually get the gas turned off? And are you certain that all the gas is shut down in that area?

Commissioner Nigro: I think – well, we mentioned before, when the Con Ed excavated, I think we shut the gas off finely to the building about 11 o’clock this morning. That’s – that was the final shut off.

Mayor: Definitely to the whole area. The whole surrounding area is shut off. And let me add, – again, imagine this situation – the firefighters arrive to a raging fire, trying to stop it from spreading to surrounding buildings – everything is check by jowl – and there’s the danger it could spread very rapidly from one building to the next. But meanwhile, after the first building went, there was the danger of additional collapses. So they’re literally standing on top of buildings, fighting a fire in the building, trying to save the surrounding buildings, not knowing how long the building they’re standing on top of – or standing in – will even hold up. That’s how dangerous it was. And everything was moving very, very quickly. And extraordinary bravery was shown by our firefighters going in to buildings even though they knew there was a danger that they could collapse at any moment.

Question: Mayor, if this does turn out to have been unlicensed work that was taking place there, do you believe the city needs more aggressive safeguards in place as a deterrent to unlicensed work? Do you believe those safeguards already exist? Does there need to be a more aggressive approach on –

Mayor: First, we have to get the facts. Second, unlicensed work is illegal, and we constantly are working to enforce against that. And we use a lot of tools and will continue to work to deepen those tools, but I don’t want to conjecture on that piece until we have a full investigation.

Question: Just to clarify, was there actual construction work going on yesterday or in the recent weeks? And if so –

Mayor: Did you say construction work?

Question: Within the building, was there plumbing or other work going on?

Mayor: I know something was happening in the building, but defining it –

Question: [inaudible]

Commissioner Nigro: Other than what’s been talked about when Con Edison came to examine that work, which was done at some point previous, we don’t know what was going on yesterday – whether people were there actually doing work – but I’m sure – it’s under investigation, and we’ll find out.

Mayor: Okay. And we are still in the process of interviewing all of those who were working at the site. Until we have talked to everyone, we won’t have a complete picture.

Question: Mr. Mayor, you mentioned that the owner of the restaurant smelled gas. Did he call 9-1-1? Or did he make any effort to evacuate his restaurant? Or should he have?

Mayor: On the first point, he called the landlord, is what we understand – called the landlord. And I understand that anyone might think that’s a common-sense thing to do. The point we have to get across is, there is no substitute for calling either 9-1-1 or Con Ed, because the landlord might be able to do something, but they can’t do what the fire department can do, they can’t do what Con Ed can do, and they have to get – the first call has to go to 9-1-1 or to Con Ed. In terms of efforts to evacuate, do we have a picture of that? Once the restaurant owner smelled the gas, did they evacuate?

Chief Boyce: At this point, it was 15 minutes later, approximately, after he called, he sent someone downstairs – the owner went down. So, no, there was no call to evacuate, to answer your question. As far as we know right now, I don’t know – when we speak to this gentleman, we’ll find out more.

Question: Just following up on my colleague’s question – is it accurate to say that officials are examining the possibility of criminal activity? And if so, is the DA’s office involved in this probe?

Mayor: Again, we – we haven’t even gotten to the site of the actual work. So there’s certainly a possibility of impropriety, but until we get to the site, we can’t determine the next steps. NYPD is involved, and they’ll assess, obviously, what next steps are necessary once we get the full picture.

Question: I just want to clarify something. So, the only work you know that was being done was this Con Ed visit? You don’t know of any other, like, plumbing or construction work in the basement?

Mayor: Again, we don’t have the full picture because we have not yet gotten the full picture from the people who are working on the site.

Question: [inaudible] permits [inaudible]?

Mayor: Permits for anything that day?

Question: [inaudible]

Mayor: Not – not anything specific for that day. There had been permits for previous work, but not for that day.

Question: Can we press get an explanation from Con Ed – what was the existing gas line? Why were they trying to expand it? What would the expansion give that building? And was it your workers – during the inspection at 2 o’clock yesterday – who give you a sense that perhaps something was being tapped into that shouldn’t have been tapped into?

Con Edison President Craig Ivey: So, there was an existing about a one-and-a-quarter inch gas service to the building that served a single meter to the restaurant. This expansion that we were working on – we installed a three-inch gas service to serve the restaurant and four apartment buildings that had cooking, hot water, and a dryer. So that was the reason for the expansion. So we were inspecting the private piping, with no gas being introduced at that point. That’s what they were doing, with the goal to introduce gas to the new installation ultimately.

Question: Not to belabor the point, and I understand you guys haven’t been able to access the site, but what preliminarily has led you guys to believe that the gas may have been accessed inappropriately?

Mayor: Again, I’m not going to go into a lot of detail. I’m simply going to say we’ve taken all the information that we’ve all been talking about – there’s an X factor here we don’t know. An option – and it certainly looks like it’s a possible option – is that something was tapped into inappropriately. But again, I would ask people not to keep asking the same question over and over, because I’ll keep answering to you – until we get into that basement and get the whole picture, we will not be able to confirm that that theory is right.

Phil Walzak: A couple more, please.

Question: Can we understand – if there was construction taking place there, there should’ve been permits from the Department of Buildings, correct? What is the process that should be in place? And can the Department of Buildings talk at all about the history of these buildings and what kind of work has been permitted there in the past?

Mayor: Right, so why don’t we start, Rick, by explaining the kinds of things that require a permit to begin with, and then whatever we know about the previous activities at this building.

Question: [inaudible] between the Department of Buildings and Con Ed [inaudible]?

Commissioner Rick Chandler, Department of Buildings: Sure. Anything that is not ordinary repair work requires a permit. We permitted gas plumbing work in 2013, and it was inspected and signed off in September of ’14. And we were satisfied  that it was done –

Mayor: In that building.

Commissioner Chandler: In that building. So that’s the relationship. And we have a database that we communicate with Con Ed and National Grid on a regular basis, so when we see that the plumbing work was installed satisfactorily then we communicate that to Con Ed. It’s up to the building owner and their contractor to contact Con Ed to work about when they introduced gas into the building. Sometimes it’s immediately, sometimes there’s a time lapse.

Mayor: Go ahead.

Question: Mr. Mayor, you’ve talked about lessons learned. I’ve just come from [inaudible] city housing project in the Bronx [inaudible] two, almost three months.

Mayor: We want to just stay on this, but go ahead.

Question: [inaudible] gas leak [inaudible] explosion, like what happened yesterday, but in addition to that, they’ve all been issued hot plates that have malfunctioned, and they’re also afraid of a similar instance to the fire that happened in Brooklyn last week. Is there anything that the city can do for them, because they’re afraid –

Mayor: Okay. We will certainly – we’ll get on this today, but I can’t speak to it until we get the facts. Let’s stay on the – on the issue at hand.

Question: [inaudible] timeline question [inaudible] – so it sounds like there were 15 minutes that went by between when Con Ed left smelling no gas and when the restaurant owner smelled the gas, and then another 15 minutes –

Mayor: In two different locations. Remember, Con Ed’s in one part of the building, the restaurant owner’s in a different part of the building.

Question: And then – and then another 15 minutes between the –

Mayor: I want to confirm that to just make sure I’m right. The Con Ed workers were not in the restaurant to the best of our knowledge.

Unknown: They were in the basement.

Mayor: They were in the basement, not in the restaurant. Right.

Question: So, and another 15 minutes, give or take, between the smelling of the gas and the explosion. So there are two questions – you may have just answered the first, which is, is it – would it be unusual maybe to Con Ed for – if the [inaudible] to show up at that point in time so soon after their inspectors were there?

Mayor: Well, I would say the obvious – I can answer this on a common-sense basis – one – you’re talking about two different locations. Two – you’re talking about the fact that at any point gas odor may make itself evident, and that’s when you have to act – literally, the first moment you smell it. But at any point that could happen in any building. So the important thing is for people to act immediately – call 9-1-1 or call Con Ed.

Question: My second question is – is there any understanding of what happened in the second 15 minutes before the explosion and – 

Mayor: Chief, can you fill in any more of that?

Chief Boyce: Sure. At – when I told you before that the owner had called the building contractor, the building contractor and the owners son went then down to the basement of that building where they were getting work done, at which time, when they opened the door, that was the explosion. So that’s what we know right now – not 100 percent on that information – we got that from Mr. Kukic.

Question: They opened the door –

Commissioner Nigro: They opened the door and the explosion happened at that point.

Mayor: Okay. A couple more.

Phil Walzak: One or two more, guys.

Question: Thanks, mayor. For the people who lived in those buildings and whose homes are gone, I would imagine it’s highly unlikely that any of their personal belongings would be recovered, but as you dig through the building, will you be looking for people’s belongings and is there a protocol in place?

Mayor: It’s obviously a lot of – a lot of destruction there. I think your initial assumption is, sadly, very true.

Commissioner Nigro: Yeah, we will look, certainly, for things that are recoverable. And the police department, of course, takes possession and finds out who could be the possible owner. Unfortunately, most of what they owned will be unrecoverable and very much destroyed.

Question: [inaudible]

Mayor: Say again.

Question: Basically, it’s a quick semantic question – to be very clear on this – when you say inappropriate access, is there anything that constitutes inappropriate access other than unlicensed work?

Mayor: I’ll – Con Ed can speak to that. The point is, if any gas line is accessed that was not authorized to be accessed. That’s an example, but again, we will fill in all those blanks. We hope to have a fuller picture in the next couple of days as we get into the basement and get the whole reality pieced together. But there’s some X factor here we do not know yet that we have to find.

Phil Walzak: Thank you, guys.

Mayor: Thanks, everyone.

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