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Harlem Explosion Victims 'In Very Bad Condition'

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Oct 8, 2007 11:13 am US/Eastern

Harlem Explosion Victims 'In Very Bad Condition'

Leaky Kitchen Gas Hose Blamed For Tragedy

NEW YORK (AP) ―

Click to enlarge 1 of 3: Medics treat injured man in Harlem building explosion.
CBS
Click to enlarge 2 of 3: A distraught woman looks on after there was an explosion in the building she was in.
CBS
Click to enlarge 3 of 3: Emergency crew member helps a woman injured in the Harlem building explosion.
CBS

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He went to the hospital to see his badly burned wife and four young daughters, finding the girls wrapped in bandages, with only their eyes visible.

"They are in very bad condition," said a distraught Rassas Alghaithi, 27, in Monday editions of The New York Times, after visiting the girls at the hospital where they remained in critical condition with their mother. "I can't even recognized which is which."

Alghaithi's wife and daughters -- Duca, 5, Tuca, 4, Lina, 3, and Afas, 1 -- were critically burned in an apartment building explosion Saturday that threw residents against their walls, blew out their windows and hurled debris into the streets.

He said his wife was burned over a large swath of her body. His assessment was bleak. "She is not going to make it," he told the Times.

A leaky kitchen gas hose was blamed Sunday for the explosion in the Harlem building.

"The source of the explosion was natural gas, which fire marshals believe leaked from a flexible hose connection behind a stove in a first-floor rear apartment," said Tony Scalfani, a spokesman for the Fire Department of New York.

Saturday's blast sent more than 20 people to hospitals, including the girls and their mother, who were in critical condition at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

The Harlem building was shored up, but a vacate order would be in effect until it was deemed safe for occupancy, a Department of

Buildings spokeswoman said. The order also applied to a building next door; another adjacent building was evacuated, but residents later were allowed to return after it was deemed safe.

Local utility Consolidated Edison said investigators checked pipes going from the street to gas meters and apartments and found all of them to be working properly.

Witnesses said the blast shattered windows and pitched air conditioners onto the sidewalk.

Some residents said one apartment was operating as an illegal restaurant, cooking and selling takeout food to taxi drivers. But the Department of Buildings said investigators found no evidence of a restaurant.

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