The scene last Friday after a protective sidewalk shed collapsed in the East Village at the spot of a deadly gas explosion four years ago.
Scaffold falls outside 2nd Ave. blast site
BY LINCOLN ANDERSON
In an eerie follow-up, a sidewalk
scaffolding outside
the scene of the fatal 2015
East Village gas explosion came
crashing down to the ground
Friday afternoon. Fortunately,
there were no injuries.
A Fire Department spokesperson
said a call came in at
4:12 p.m. reporting the accident.
When this paper called shortly
before 5 p.m., the Fire spokesperson
said the fi rst responding
unit was still on the scene, but
was telling other emergency responders
— including the Collapse
Unit — to either “come
in slow or turn around” and go
back to their stationhouses.
Yvonne Collery, who lives at
125 Second Ave., said it was her
understanding that the structure
had been hit by a truck,
causing it to fall.
“I heard the shed fall,” she
said. “After going downstairs,
I learned a box truck had been
cut off by a car and tapped the
corner of the shed. That is when
it collapsed.”
Collery previously wrote in
this paper about how her twin
cats Laszlo and Lulu survived
the gas explosion on the block.
In the March 2015 disaster,
an illegal gas-siphoning system
that had been rigged up in the
basement at 121 Second Ave.
caused a thunderous explosion
that turned into a raging infer-
PHOTOS BY YVONNE COLLERY
Firefighters responded to the scene at E. Seventh St. and Second Ave. on Friday afternoon
after a protective sidewalk shed collapsed.
no. Two men were killed: Nicholas
Figueroa, 23, a customer at a
Japanese restaurant in No. 121,
and Moises Locon, 27, a worker
there. In the end, three adjacent
buildings were destroyed: 119,
121 and 123 Second Aves.
A new residential building is
now being constructed at 119
and 121 Second Ave. The design
by Morris Adjmi Architects
calls for a market-rate, sevenstory
apartment building, with
21 residences, plus ground-level
storefronts, to replace two of the
three historic tenement buildings
destroyed by fi re. The parcels
were purchased in 2016 for
a reported $9.15 million by the
Nexus Building Development
Group.
In the years following the
devastating explosion, homeless
“crusty travelers” have taken to
camping out on the sidewalk
outside the empty corner site in
the warm weather. Things came
to a head this past summer when
local residents’ outrage over the
crusties’ behavior — including
public urination and allegedly
menacing behavior — boiled
over.
The New York Post ran a photo
of one of the homeless youth
intoxicated and lying on the sidewalk
and urinating next to a free
WiFi kiosk. Police cracked down
by installing light towers, but
eventually the weather turned
cold and the crusties headed off
to warmer climes.
Schneps Media CNW May 16, 2019 27