Two people are dead, 22 are hurt and others are missing after two buildings collapsed following a gas leak explosion that rattled upper Manhattan and shattered windows with a blast that could be felt blocks away, officials said.
The two five-story buildings at the northwest corner of 116th Street and Park Avenue in Harlem collapsed at about 9:30 a.m., authorities said. Smoke billowed into Central Park and could be seen from miles away in midtown, and New Yorkers said they felt rumbles as far away as 150th Street. Closer to the collapse, groceries were knocked from store shelves and debris floated through the air.
Mayor de Blasio said the buildings are destroyed, and that first responders were digging through the rubble for victims.
The only indication of anything wrong before the explosion was a call to Con Edison from a nearby building, reporting a strong odor of gas just minutes before the blast, the mayor and the utility said. But it was too late.
"This is a tragedy of the worst kind because there was no indication in time to save people," de Blasio said.
FDNY said two people had life-threatening injuries, five are seriously hurt and 15 had minor injuries.
A woman who said she was watching TV in her home about a block away said the explosion blew out her windows.
"All my windows shattered and I didn't know what it was," she said on NBC 4 New York. She said first responders soon arrived at her building and ordered everyone out.
Another woman who was at her home on 115th Street between Park and Lexington avenues said she heard the explosion and thought it was a bomb. The explosion was near where Metro-North tracks run through Harlem.
"I thought a train had exploded," said Marisa Aquino.
"It sounded like a bomb. That's what it really sounded like," Trey Dey, a laborer who was working in a nearby basement when the buildings exploded, told NBC 4 New York.
The Buildings Department said one of the collapsed buildings had six units, the other had nine.
Relatives of people who lived there were distraught at the scene.
"I want to know if my daughter is fine," said one woman.
FDNY said it had hundreds of firefighters and first responders working at the scene to fight smoldering fires and search for victims.
Officials cautioned it would be a painstaking process that would take time. The FDNY also said it was working to seal up windows that were blown out in surrounding buildings.
The explosion blew debris onto the elevated tracks of the Metro-North tracks above Park Avenue, causing a shutdown of service in both directions.
--Joe Valiquette and Kyli Singh contributed to this story