Bandwagon
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Steam Explosion in Midtown Manhattan
I’ll skip the prose, and get straight to the facts. I work at 605 Third Avenue in New York, at 40th Street and Third Avenue, on the 17th floor. That is exactly two blocks from the site of today’s burst steam pipe near Grand Central Station. My notes on the experience are as follows.
Shortly before 6pm, I was busy trying to wrap up my work for the day, when my co-worker, Lindsay, in the cube next to me said, “what’s that noise?” I hadn’t really noticed until she mentioned it, but there was an odd rumbling resonating through our building. It sounded like a mixture of thunder and a jet engine. What made it distinct, however, was there was no throbbing booms (like thunder) nor was there a traditional doppler affect noise (like there is with a moving jet plane). It was a steady consistent rumble.
The consistency of the noise eased my fears a little bit, since no bomb makes a prolonged noise like that. However, there was a lot of uneasiness, as others on my floor began to notice it too and also found it odd. I turned on the TV in a nearby office, and flipped through the local news. There were no breaking news reports from Midtown Manhattan, and a glance out the windows at the pedestrians below revealed nothing out of the ordinary.
Before sitting at my desk again and resuming work, I took a quick walk over to the opposite end of the office. The steady rumbling wasn’t going away, and I wandered around trying to find where it was coming from. Most everyone else on the floor had become aware of the noise. Suddenly, another co-worker frantically came down from the north west end of the office (the corner closest to Grand Central Station), saying, “there are people running on the street. They are running everywhere!”
It was right as he said this that I began hearing the sirens. Lots of sirens coming from every direction. I went back to the office where I had turned the TV on, and there was still no reporting on any situation in Midtown. We all found this insanely frustrating, because a fear for our lives was beginning to creep in, and we wanted information.
The conundrum that came over me had to do with what to do next. The rumbling, mixed with the sound of sirens, was becoming more ominous and threatening. Add in the fact that we had no idea what had happened and where it had happened, we all felt a little helpless. We weren’t sure if where we were in more danger, in the office, or on the street. The sight of people frantically running around below certainly didn’t make the decision any easier. But, I know we were all thinking of the collapse of the World Trade Center too, and instincts said “get out.”
Any concept of time was lost, but this whole thing couldn’t have gone on for more than ten minutes. Thankfully, a voice came on over the building loudspeaker, announcing that a steam explosion had occurred near the Chrysler building and that even though there was no immediate threat, we should evacuate the building. Within about ten minutes we had check all the offices and gotten everyone to head out. The elevators weren’t working, so we had to walk down the 17 flights.
We exited the building on 40th street between Third and Second Avenues. At the time, we had no idea that we were two blocks from the explosion. Everyone started walking East away from the amassing squad cars and fire trucks, but I had a FedEx package to drop of on Third Avenue. The authorities were not impeding my path to get there, so I proceeded in that direction. After leaving FedEx, I milled around a bit to observe the scene. At this point, no one had and idea what was going on. Some crowds were starting to gather, while other people were frantically trying to get out of there.
I tried calling my Mom in Wisconsin, who usually has the news on all day, but had a hard time getting through (not sure if there was too much cell phone traffic, or if some of the towers were out). Once I finally got through, I could barely hear her over the loud jet engine-like sound that was emanating from the Grand Central Station area. I shouted into my phone “Something happened near my office. It’s really loud and there are siren’s everywhere. I don’t know what’s going on!” I couldn’t hear exactly what she said in response, but she seemed remarkably calm, considering she was freaking out last fall when Cory Lidle crashed his plane into a building on the Upper East Side. I got the sense she was going to try to figure out what was happening.
I knew I should have tried to get out of there, but curiosity got the better of me, and I started wandering around trying to get a view of what was going on. It didn’t take too much wandering to get to the bottom of it all. I walked west on 39th street and as I came around the corner on Lexington Avenue, I could see what was causing all that noise. A huge plume of steam and mud was spewing out of a large crater in the middle of the street just two blocks up.
It was both an impressive and tragic scene. The plume of steam was shooting hundreds of feet in the air—at least as tall as the nearby Chrysler Building. There was another tall office building right in front of the crater that was almost completely obscured by the shooting steam. Bricks and other debris were strewn all across the street in the one block radius surrounding the crater . . . and there was a school bus right next to it. I still have yet to get an answer on how many people were in that bus, and what happened to them.
There was no sense of immediate danger, so I reached for my camera, thinking I might capture some great shots. Sadly, it’s batteries were drained. It was fine though, since everyone else on the street had a camera, and was snapping away. There was no shortage of documentation of the scene.
By this point, I’d gotten texts from several friends and family, who I had already tried to contact, explaining that the explosion was related to a steam pipe burst or a blown transformer. Whether a transformer was involved was uncertain to me, but with the sudden geyser that had sprung up in the middle of Lexington Avenue, there was no doubt that steam was involved.
A man walked by me on the street wearing a suit and soaked and covered in mud speckles. I was surprised by the consistency of the mud on him. It was as if he had walked through a thick muddy mist. It was like mud spackle, as opposed to clumps of mud. Soon, a few more muddy people came through, although they were not as bad. I started talking to one of them. He said he worked in the building right next to the crater. When the pipe burst, he and everyone else assumed it was a bomb or something. Fearing the building was about to collapse, they tried to get out as soon as they could. Their only route of escape took them right through the steam and the mud geyser.
I found myself standing next to the other guy who was caked in mud. A reporter from the Daily News approached him. He didn’t realize she was a reporter at first, and when he did, he became reluctant to share his story. When she asked for his address, he declined. From the bits of their conversation I was able to pick up, I gathered he was right next to the crater as the pipe burst. He said he didn’t see it, but heard it and felt it. He theorized immediately that it was not a bomb, because it sounded like pressure quickly built up below the road, and then slowly burst through to the surface (unlike a bomb, that would have instantly blown through).
I milled around a while longer, as the billowing geyser slowed into a trickle of steam, and then into nothing but a crater, puddle, and mess of debris. Plenty of people came by to gawk, like myself. The police got a little frustrated with the crowd getting in the way of emergency vehicles that were trying to get through. By this point, we had been pushed back to 38th street and Lexington, three blocks from the crater. Several news trucks and cameras had set up there. NBC 4 had a reporter at that intersection.
As I stood there taking in the scene, it became surreal and alarming in my mind, even if the incident itself no longer was. I walk through that intersection on days that I decide to walk across town to catch my bus to Jersey. I had planned to get out of the office in a timely manner today, but I thankfully got held up, and avoided the disaster. There were a few moments in the office, when we first heard the sirens, and the rumbling wasn’t going away that I was quite concerned about my safety. It’s moments like those that mortality really hits you.
I was also shocked that more people didn’t lose their lives. Thankfully, no gas or explosive materials were involved. Yet the scene looked really nasty.
NY Times Updates ¶ 10:35 PM 0 Comments
Shortly before 6pm, I was busy trying to wrap up my work for the day, when my co-worker, Lindsay, in the cube next to me said, “what’s that noise?” I hadn’t really noticed until she mentioned it, but there was an odd rumbling resonating through our building. It sounded like a mixture of thunder and a jet engine. What made it distinct, however, was there was no throbbing booms (like thunder) nor was there a traditional doppler affect noise (like there is with a moving jet plane). It was a steady consistent rumble.
The consistency of the noise eased my fears a little bit, since no bomb makes a prolonged noise like that. However, there was a lot of uneasiness, as others on my floor began to notice it too and also found it odd. I turned on the TV in a nearby office, and flipped through the local news. There were no breaking news reports from Midtown Manhattan, and a glance out the windows at the pedestrians below revealed nothing out of the ordinary.
Before sitting at my desk again and resuming work, I took a quick walk over to the opposite end of the office. The steady rumbling wasn’t going away, and I wandered around trying to find where it was coming from. Most everyone else on the floor had become aware of the noise. Suddenly, another co-worker frantically came down from the north west end of the office (the corner closest to Grand Central Station), saying, “there are people running on the street. They are running everywhere!”
It was right as he said this that I began hearing the sirens. Lots of sirens coming from every direction. I went back to the office where I had turned the TV on, and there was still no reporting on any situation in Midtown. We all found this insanely frustrating, because a fear for our lives was beginning to creep in, and we wanted information.
The conundrum that came over me had to do with what to do next. The rumbling, mixed with the sound of sirens, was becoming more ominous and threatening. Add in the fact that we had no idea what had happened and where it had happened, we all felt a little helpless. We weren’t sure if where we were in more danger, in the office, or on the street. The sight of people frantically running around below certainly didn’t make the decision any easier. But, I know we were all thinking of the collapse of the World Trade Center too, and instincts said “get out.”
Any concept of time was lost, but this whole thing couldn’t have gone on for more than ten minutes. Thankfully, a voice came on over the building loudspeaker, announcing that a steam explosion had occurred near the Chrysler building and that even though there was no immediate threat, we should evacuate the building. Within about ten minutes we had check all the offices and gotten everyone to head out. The elevators weren’t working, so we had to walk down the 17 flights.
We exited the building on 40th street between Third and Second Avenues. At the time, we had no idea that we were two blocks from the explosion. Everyone started walking East away from the amassing squad cars and fire trucks, but I had a FedEx package to drop of on Third Avenue. The authorities were not impeding my path to get there, so I proceeded in that direction. After leaving FedEx, I milled around a bit to observe the scene. At this point, no one had and idea what was going on. Some crowds were starting to gather, while other people were frantically trying to get out of there.
I tried calling my Mom in Wisconsin, who usually has the news on all day, but had a hard time getting through (not sure if there was too much cell phone traffic, or if some of the towers were out). Once I finally got through, I could barely hear her over the loud jet engine-like sound that was emanating from the Grand Central Station area. I shouted into my phone “Something happened near my office. It’s really loud and there are siren’s everywhere. I don’t know what’s going on!” I couldn’t hear exactly what she said in response, but she seemed remarkably calm, considering she was freaking out last fall when Cory Lidle crashed his plane into a building on the Upper East Side. I got the sense she was going to try to figure out what was happening.
I knew I should have tried to get out of there, but curiosity got the better of me, and I started wandering around trying to get a view of what was going on. It didn’t take too much wandering to get to the bottom of it all. I walked west on 39th street and as I came around the corner on Lexington Avenue, I could see what was causing all that noise. A huge plume of steam and mud was spewing out of a large crater in the middle of the street just two blocks up.
It was both an impressive and tragic scene. The plume of steam was shooting hundreds of feet in the air—at least as tall as the nearby Chrysler Building. There was another tall office building right in front of the crater that was almost completely obscured by the shooting steam. Bricks and other debris were strewn all across the street in the one block radius surrounding the crater . . . and there was a school bus right next to it. I still have yet to get an answer on how many people were in that bus, and what happened to them.
There was no sense of immediate danger, so I reached for my camera, thinking I might capture some great shots. Sadly, it’s batteries were drained. It was fine though, since everyone else on the street had a camera, and was snapping away. There was no shortage of documentation of the scene.
By this point, I’d gotten texts from several friends and family, who I had already tried to contact, explaining that the explosion was related to a steam pipe burst or a blown transformer. Whether a transformer was involved was uncertain to me, but with the sudden geyser that had sprung up in the middle of Lexington Avenue, there was no doubt that steam was involved.
A man walked by me on the street wearing a suit and soaked and covered in mud speckles. I was surprised by the consistency of the mud on him. It was as if he had walked through a thick muddy mist. It was like mud spackle, as opposed to clumps of mud. Soon, a few more muddy people came through, although they were not as bad. I started talking to one of them. He said he worked in the building right next to the crater. When the pipe burst, he and everyone else assumed it was a bomb or something. Fearing the building was about to collapse, they tried to get out as soon as they could. Their only route of escape took them right through the steam and the mud geyser.
I found myself standing next to the other guy who was caked in mud. A reporter from the Daily News approached him. He didn’t realize she was a reporter at first, and when he did, he became reluctant to share his story. When she asked for his address, he declined. From the bits of their conversation I was able to pick up, I gathered he was right next to the crater as the pipe burst. He said he didn’t see it, but heard it and felt it. He theorized immediately that it was not a bomb, because it sounded like pressure quickly built up below the road, and then slowly burst through to the surface (unlike a bomb, that would have instantly blown through).
I milled around a while longer, as the billowing geyser slowed into a trickle of steam, and then into nothing but a crater, puddle, and mess of debris. Plenty of people came by to gawk, like myself. The police got a little frustrated with the crowd getting in the way of emergency vehicles that were trying to get through. By this point, we had been pushed back to 38th street and Lexington, three blocks from the crater. Several news trucks and cameras had set up there. NBC 4 had a reporter at that intersection.
As I stood there taking in the scene, it became surreal and alarming in my mind, even if the incident itself no longer was. I walk through that intersection on days that I decide to walk across town to catch my bus to Jersey. I had planned to get out of the office in a timely manner today, but I thankfully got held up, and avoided the disaster. There were a few moments in the office, when we first heard the sirens, and the rumbling wasn’t going away that I was quite concerned about my safety. It’s moments like those that mortality really hits you.
I was also shocked that more people didn’t lose their lives. Thankfully, no gas or explosive materials were involved. Yet the scene looked really nasty.
NY Times Updates ¶ 10:35 PM 0 Comments
