Fire

Two buildings exploded at 116th Street and Park Avenue in East Harlem yesterday morning at 9:31 a.m. It was a gray morning, not a clear blue one, but it brought back memories of the day two other buildings exploded, and everything was forever changed. The death toll is rising, now at seven souls. More than 60 people sustained injuries. Tenants of surrounding building cannot go back into their homes. Their windows blew out and their apartments are unprotected from the elements. The temperature fell last night into the 20s and heavy rains came down.

My friend Leslie, who lives six blocks away, felt her apartment shake with the boom. We had dinner last night because she was still feeling shaky, reliving the emotions that rocked her after 9/11. When you live alone, she explained, these things slide more deeply inside you, because there is no one around you to show you that life is continuing on. You might as well be alone on the planet.

I cannot fathom people just going about their day, an ordinary morning just like any other, and then their whole world is in rubble around them. It was a gas main explosion apparently. The people in one building had been complaining of smelling gas for weeks, and there were apparently no carbon monoxide detectors in the apartments. Compounding the hell was a sinkhole that opened up beneath the concrete and steel debris, so that heavy vehicles and rescue machinery had to be carefully brought in. The rooftops of surrounding buildings were covered with firefighters, the streets still filled with EMT uniforms. Overnight, new flares bloomed as the remaining fuel from the leak burned off. Today, the recovery and clean-up continues. My son isn't there with them. Not yet.