Tuesday, October 26, 2010

[Updated]: Explosion, fire on First Avenue and Ninth Street






[Photo from EV Grieve reader Jason]

From a reader:

Didja hear about the explosion at the northwest corner of 1st avenue and 9th street?

Supposedly an electrical fire underground. Con Ed hasn't shown up and the fire crews are watching the smoke billowing out. It sounded like someone dropped a fridge off a second floor, around 12:15.


A photo from another reader shows that the situation is under control...



And a description for someone at the scene...



We're hearing from a few people that power is out in a few buildings around here.... looking at the ConEd Storm Center map for outages...

14 comments:

Desmond said...

Where will the crusties sleep? That's their spot.

East Village Wines said...

A little entertainment for the tourist buses. It's like our own Universal Studios.

EV Grieve said...

@East Village Wines

Heh. And tonight they get — bedbugs!

Anonymous said...

What is going on in the EV with ConEd fires? There was one on 7th Street and Avenue A about a month ago and now this?

glamma said...

seems like there's a lot of electrical issues in this area, isn't this where that woman died a few years ago?

EV Grieve said...

@Glamma

Jodie Lane was killed on First Avenue at 11th Street. Can't believe that was nearly seven years ago now... (Jan. 2004).

Mark Hand The Catchman said...

"What is going on in the EV with ConEd fires? There was one on 7th Street and Avenue A about a month ago and now this?"

Simple: insane demands for electricity, and general lack of even modest conservation [guess you enjoy a high electric bill]...
That phone charger still plugged in... the laptop charger still plugged in... the lights left on... all add to the drain on the grid
This past summer almost every-other block had bizarro wires running from manhole covers into buildings... it'll be a miracle if next summer the whole nabe just does'nt implode

Anonymous said...

The same thing happened on 8th Avenue and 23rd Street a couple of weeks ago. Is this the time of the year for underground fires or what?

blue glass said...

the lights flickered for a while on 10th street 1-2 this afternoon.

con has replaced cables that were replaced only a few years ago.
it appears that they underestimated the amount of power they would need, and that many con ed workers are hired on an emergency basis and are not familiar with the con edison grid and other con edison issues.
i had a long discussion with a con edison guy this summer when they spent an awful lot of time around first avenue 9, 10 and 11th streets, among others.

Anonymous said...

I live at 1st and 10th and a few weeks ago we had power problems in our building all weekend. There was a con-ed van stationed outside our front door and a bunch of huge thick wires running from a manhole cover into our building.

I don't know wtf is going on but the cabling in the ev is clearly fucked.

Also, last winter there was a huge steam explosion right outside my building too..

HippieChick said...

I heard the initial big boom, then nothing until I started smelling the horrible smoke. FDNY made a silent approach, for never a siren did I hear.

Then the lights started flickering on 9th Street. Badly flickering. I turned my computer off at once, and everything else too, and went down to see what the hell. FDNY just standing around and told me Con Ed wasn't expected for 20 minutes, as there continued to be small explosions and lots of smoke.

Eventually Con Ed showed up; there's still trucks on the block at this, but the lights have been steady since about 2 pm.

It's always something.

Anonymous said...

recession
recession
recession

Mandy said...

I live right there and didn't notice the boom at all--we get enough large trucks barreling by that I don't pay attention to noises like that anymore. The lights were flickering from 12:30 on, and then I had to leave and saw all the trucks at about 1 p.m. The smell was terrible, and police were not allowing anyone on the sidewalks towards 1st Avenue.

The power was out from about 1:30 to 6 p.m. today for about half of the south side of 9th Street between 2nd Avenue and 1st Avenue. I can still hear all the work going on outside, and I imagine they'll be going for most of the night.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, a couple of months ago (before I discovered this blog), my building and half the rest of my block lost power for several hours (Allen between Stanton & Rivington). Ugh. I'm glad they replaced our cables. I'm hoping we're all set for another decade.