Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Con Edison of New York Largely Liable in Deadly East Harlem Explosion, Regulators Find


Devorah Schiller of the Bronx took a photograph of the scene of the explosion in March 2014 as firefighters extinguished flames and cleared debris. Credit Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
WASHINGTON, DC

Federal regulators on Tuesday found Consolidated Edison to be largely responsible for the explosion of natural gas that destroyed two apartment buildings in East Harlem last year and killed eight people.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates gas explosions, pipeline ruptures, plane crashes and other disasters, decided that the primary cause of the blast on March 12, 2014, was a faulty connection between two of Con Edison’s plastic gas pipes under Park Avenue. The fusion of the two pipes failed, allowing gas to escape into the ground and migrate into one of the buildings, where it became concentrated enough to combust, the safety board found.

The safety board’s staff also concluded that rescue crews could have arrived at the scene and begun evacuating the block about 15 minutes before the 9:30 a.m. blast if the utility had alerted the New York Fire Department right away. A neighborhood resident called the utility at about 9:06 a.m., saying he smelled gas inside and outside his apartment building, they said.

Members of the National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday presented their findings from an investigation into the East Harlem gas explosion. Credit T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times
Con Ed did call the Fire Department about 13 minutes later, but then withdrew the call before the department sent any crews, the safety board’s staff found. They quoted a Con Ed dispatcher on the phone with the department, saying: “Hold up. No, sorry. Hold on. Hold on. I’ll call you right back.”

Eleven minutes later, the explosion rocked the entire block, damaging buildings on both sides of Park Avenue, leaving more than 100 families homeless and disrupting train service on the Metro-North Railroad tracks above Park until late in the day.

The safety board also faulted the city’s Department of Environmental Protection for neglecting for at least eight years to repair a gaping hole in a sewer main in front of the buildings that were destroyed in the blast. Con Edison officials have pointed to the erosion caused by that broken sewer main as a contributing factor in the explosion. City officials have disputed that contention.

Just days before the safety board took up the cause of the explosion in Harlem, Con Edison filed suit against the city, blaming the city’s failure to maintain the sewer and water mains near its gas pipes. In the suit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, the company contended that the city’s Transportation Department had repeatedly been notified of depressions in the pavement of Park Avenue that indicated the earth beneath the surface was eroding.

The utility is seeking to have the city shoulder the liability in lawsuits filed by victims of the explosion and their families.

The hearing was the first public airing of the safety board’s findings from an investigation that took more than a year. The board’s investigators were at the scene within a day of the blast, collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses.

The safety board is best known for investigating crashes of planes, trains and long-haul trucks. But it also oversees gas pipelines and, technically speaking, Con Edison’s gas mains under the city’s streets fit that bill. The heavy toll of the explosion in Harlem drew the safety board’s attention.


The main that ran under the block of Park Avenue where the blast occurred was made of cast iron and had been installed more than 120 years ago. Iron pipes of that vintage are prone to springing leaks, but documents the safety board released this year indicated that the source of the trouble may have been newer plastic pipes that had been connected to the old main.

Con Edison replaced a 69-foot section of the cast-iron main with plastic pipe in 2011. The utility used a small plastic pipe to connect that new section to a building at 1642 Park Avenue.

One of the documents released said investigators had injected traceable gas into the main to locate any leaks. They found high concentrations of the gas had escaped into the ground in front of 1642 Park at a point where the main was new plastic, not part of the old iron pipe, according to the document. They also found that the smaller pipe, known as a service line, had separated from the main. While 1642 Park survived the explosion, two neighboring buildings — at 1644 and 1646 Park, near 116th Street — were destroyed.

During the investigation, the safety board determined that the foreman who oversaw Con Edison’s installation of the plastic section of the main had not kept his qualifications to do that work up-to-date. State regulators later found that 70 percent of Con Edison’s pipe fitters had not kept their qualifications current. The company said it would retrain all of the workers who install and maintain its network of gas mains.