Their building reopened March 28, but Bauermeister complained that the smell of smoke was so “putrid,” she didn’t want to sleep there.
Ramatowska said she got “like, five or six scratches” when she went outside to inspect the blast site. Bauermeister didn’t suffer any physical injuries — but did say she is seeing a $175-an-hour psychologist to deal with the trauma.
Buy two one-way bus tickets out of NYC and a good riddence letter in the form of a full page ad in a NYC paper for heartless opportunists Anna Ramotowska and Lucie Bauermeister (or help the real victims of a tragic multi-building fire)
Please join us as we come together as a community to raise money for all those affected. $5 at the door gets you awesome food from neighborhood establishments, a drink ticket, drink specials, DJs and live music. Try your luck in the raffle and win big in the silent auction! All food, entertainment and prizes are being generously donated by local businesses.
ALL proceeds from the door, raffle and auction will be donated directly to LES Ready!, a wonderful group that focuses on both preparedness training and recovery in the event of a disaster, and works specifically with residents of the Lower East Side and the East Village. LES Ready! has generously agreed to earmark the funds contributed from this event specifically for those displaced by the explosion and fire. It will be used to help families and residents pay for security deposits and rent in their new homes, as well as related expenses.
In addition to murder — which carries a maximum 25 years to life in the slammer — other charges said to be under consideration include second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
In Queens, where Mr. Locón lived in a rented room decorated with images of his adopted city, the Guatemalan Consulate had arranged a funeral at the Church of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which has connections to Guatemalans in Jamaica, as well as the wake in Brooklyn. It had been up to Mr. Locón’s three brothers and his cousin, far from their family in Guatemala, to take care of everything else.
“He was just working,” Mr. Locón’s cousin, Pablo Yac, 23, said during the wake. “I’m crying for him.”
Mr. Locón’s brother Alfredo, 30, stood off to one side, trying to organize things. He was the oldest, the one who had tried to take care of his brothers in New York. Asked if he knew that people had been donating to a fund for the family, created by a woman in the East Village, Alfredo nodded. “We’re thankful for everything that people have done for us,” he said, his voice breaking.
“I’m always going to miss him. I love him. He was my best friend,” he said, distraught. “He was a very good person. Everyone loved him very much.”
When they went outside to see what had happened, glass was flying, and Ramotowska said she got “like, five or six scratches” on the back of her left hand when she used it to protect her face.
The roomies ran back to grab their valuables, including Ramotowska’s pet Pomeranian, Darnell, and a fur coat that had belonged to Baumeister’s grandma.
Baumeister said she couldn’t sleep and lost her appetite after the blast and started seeing a $175-an-hour psychologist who recommended at least six to eight more weeks of counseling.
After a disaster like the deadly Second Avenue explosion and fire, impacted small businesses struggle to survive. #SaveNYC is holding a Small Biz Crawl along Second Avenue to bring customers, cash and attention to those mom-and-pops in need. This weekend, we’ll do the western side of Second Avenue; next time, the eastern side.
Meet #SaveNYC on Saturday, April 11, at noon. We’re starting at Gem Spa on the northwest corner of Second Avenue and St. Mark’s Place. Buy your magazines, newspapers and egg creams at this first stop. From there, we’ll head down toward 7th Street. Do some gift shopping at Himalayan Visions. Then it’s lunch at the B&H Dairy or Paul’s Da Burger Joint. Your choice. After lunch, we’ll weave our way across the barricades of 7th Street to stock up on groceries at the New Yorkers Foodmarket. Please bring your #SaveNYC sign to let everyone know who we are and why we’re there. Click here to print out signs — and to find out more about #SaveNYC.
Nicholas Figueroa was the kind of man fathers would want to marry their daughters, his Scoutmaster said at his wake...
“He was very young, so motivated,” Luis Benitez said as services got under way. “He was a pillar of the community.”
"It's devastating," Neal Figueroa said. "There are no words adequate to describe my brother. This room speaks for itself. Look at all these people who have come to honor my brother."
"He had all the love for everybody," his father, Nixon Figueroa said. "Everywhere he goes he gave a good smile, he brought life into people. He was a caring kid."
This is likely going to end up a homicide case,” a high-ranking police source told the Daily News. “The DA will probably bring it to the grand jury.”
The focus of the criminal investigation is building owner Maria Hrynenko and contractor Dilber Kukic, sources have said.
Both are suspected of tapping into a gas main meant to serve only a first-floor sushi restaurant to provide heat to Hrynenko’s tenants on upper floors. Kukic is no stranger to the law. He was arrested in October for allegedly trying to give a city inspector a $600 cash bribe to make two violations on buildings he owns on W. 173rd St. in Manhattan go away.
“No one's going to be charged for doing sloppy work, but if it can be proved that someone was told to do this, then it's a criminally negligent homicide,” the source said.
The unidentified tradesman confessed to rigging a gas-supply system for apartments at 121 Second Ave. but blamed it on his boss to “deflect” any fault from himself, law-enforcement sources said.
Authorities haven’t decided whether to cut a deal with the worker in exchange for his testimony or use his statement against him, one source said.
His problems are compounded by a lack of business-interruption insurance, which would have covered losses for the days the restaurant was closed. Insufficient coverage is a frequent problem for small-business owners, who are always looking to cut what can seem like nonessential costs.
"If you're on a mom-and-pop scale, a business-interruption policy is so expensive, if you never need it, you lost a lot of money paying for it, so you take your chances," Mr. Wardrop.
But even on streets that aren't barricaded, and where stores didn't have to close for four days, the disruption of the neighborhood's foot-traffic patterns is continuing. The maze of barricades and fire trucks has cut business by 50% at New Yorkers Foodmarket, on Second Avenue between East Sixth and East Seventh streets, according to owner Michael Schumacher. That's added up to a $50,000 loss of sales during the past week.
Unlike Paul's Da Burger's insurance policy, Foodmarket's does include business-interruption coverage. But Mr. Schumacher said it doesn't extend to a slowdown in business caused by disruptions somewhere else.
The last time his store was in this much trouble was after Superstorm Sandy. But the supermarket owner says this disaster is worse.
"With Sandy, there were no businesses open, and afterwards everybody opened up at the same time," Mr. Schumacher said. "Business came right back. I don't know if business is going to come back, because people are finding other stores to go to."
A spokeswoman for the Office of Emergency Management said that full access to [the] block — the west side of Second Avenue between St. Marks Place and East Seventh Street — will be restored once debris removal and the investigation of what is being treated as a crime scene are concluded. She could not provide a date.
The resource center will be open on Fri from 9 to 5, Sat 9 to 3 and Mon & Tues 12 - 9. 59 E. 4th St CB3 will be the new center
— LESReady (@LESReadyNYC) April 3, 2015
We're live at #EastVillageExplosion site. It happened one week ago today . Updates all morning on @NY1 pic.twitter.com/UAhovurbhl
— Rocco Vertuccio (@NewsieRocco) April 2, 2015
Despite a growing fondness for his adopted city — the walls of his rented room in Queens bore a poster of the Empire State Building and a framed cover from The New Yorker — Mr. Locón had been planning to return to Guatemala this year to reunite with his girlfriend [his childhood sweetheart], according to a cousin, Pablo Yac.