Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf is a New York Plaintiff's personal injury law firm specializing in automobile accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice, products liability, police misconduct and all types of New York personal injury litigation.

Articles Posted in Explosion and Fire Accidents

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NYC explosionA construction worker was critically injured and two others suffered serious personal injury in a gas explosion that rocked the walls of the science lab at John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx, NYC. 36 year Luigi Barillaro, 38 year old James Intriago and 53 year old Charles Marullo, were all working for the plumbing and heating company Mar-Sal Plumbing & Heating Inc., based on Pitkin Avenue in Ozone Park, Queens, NYC. The company was hired to install a tabletop gas valve as part of a science lab construction project located on the sixth floor of the building. The 3 men had been working all day and the room was filled with gas but they apparently didn’t detect the smell of gas because they had been desensitized to it. At one point Luigi Barillaro lit a match to check if the gas was working, sparking a huge explosion, blowing out the walls and sending debris flying 200 feet.

Barillaro was critically injured and had burns over most his body. He has already undergone multiple skin-grafting surgeries. Intriago and Maruallo were also still in the hospital and being treated for burns to their arms and faces.

The school was issued a full vacate order for the entire building and a safety zone was put in place along some facades. Students who were supposed to start school there on September 9 will have to be temporarily relocated.

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22 people including 10 firefighters suffered personal injury in a two-alarm fire that ravaged the 16th and 17th floors of a high rise building on 3333 Broadway in Manhattan. The fire started around 10:00 am in the morning and firefighters battled the blaze for two hours until it was controlled (read more in the NY Daily News).

Later on, in the afternoon, two people died in blaze that destroyed a house in the Rockaways in Queens, NYC. According to the NYFD, the house was very cluttered making it difficult for firefighters to reach the kitchen where the two victims were located.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1Fqi4545HM

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A man died after he jumped out of a building on fire yesterday in East Harlem, New York.  The fire started Sunday morning around 5:50 am at 245 E. 124th St. near Second Ave (see picture). In an attempt to flee the blaze, the 58 year old man who was living on the seventh floor jumped out of his window.  He was found outside the building in critical condition and was transported to the hospital where he died from his injuries. Four other people, including a firefighter suffered personal injury and were also transported to the hospital. It took firefighters an hour to stop the fire.  Read more in the NY Daily News

245 East 124th Street

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A manhole explosion sent fire and black smoke in the air this morning around 9:30 on 37th Street between Seven and Eighth Ave in Manhattan, NYC. The explosion caused several buildings nearby to loose power for some time. One building was reported to have no power for at least 8 hours. It took several hours for the firefighters to stop the fire that was coming out of the manhole. Manhole explosions often happen when the rain brings down the salt from the winter into frayed wire or when rats  gnawed at the wire. An investigation is ongoing to determine the cause of this specific explosion. read more on NBC New York.

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East_Harlem_apartment_explosion_aerial_viewCon Ed says the city’s negligence caused the gas explosion that destroyed two buildings last year in Harlem. In a law suit filed yesterday, Con Ed indicates that,  over the years, the NYC Department of Transportation received multiple complaints of huge depressions in the street pavement on Park Avenue near 116th street where the two buildings exploded.”As a result of these defects in the city’s infrastructure in the vicinity of the incident, the gas facilities were exposed to and affected by leaking water, rocks, debris, sand, soil, roadway pavement and other foreign objects,” the filing says.

Read  more in the NY Daily News  

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A Boltbus that departed from New York to go to Boston exploded on the Massachusetts Turnpike yesterday during rush hours.  The bus driver noticed smoke coming out of the bus, pulled over and immediately evacuated the 47 passengers with their belongings. Shortly after the bus exploded and caught fire. The recasons of the explosion are still being investigated.

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Two workers who were trying to remove an underground oil-tank from a backyard died after the tank exploded. One of the workers was sitting on the tank and was cutting into it with a saw when the explosion happened. The blast was so violent that his body was thrown 25 yards away into the woods. The other man who was standing  nearby was also killed. The accident happened last Thursday in the backyard of a home on Hillside Avenue in Hasting-On-Hudson. The two men killed were Mora Segundo, 50, and Luis Jacho, 52 from Ossining.  Investigators discovered that the tank contained gasoline instead of oil. Gasoline vapors that built up pressure over time are suspected to be the cause of the explosion. Read more here

 

 

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Our Managing Partner Ben Rubinowitz  was interviewed by Mario Diaz of  PIX 11 as to the recent NYC East Village gas explosion.  Mr. Diaz quoted Ben as follows,  “It’s a  rare thing to have one party to blame. Usually there is shared fault in these cases.” Ben went on to state,  “The gas should have been shut down to the entire building no  matter what until this was rectified. In other words the failure to make sure that everyone was protected is where the fault lies.” To read the full article and see the video  interview click here.

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An explosion that injured 19 people, causing a massive a massive fire which caused three buildings to collapse, was caused when construction workers inside a sushi restaurant in the East Village accidentally hit a gas line. The explosion inside 121 Second Ave., between East 7th Street and St. Marks Place, caused the buildings at 121, 123 and 119 to collapse after they became engulfed in flames, according to city officials. No. 125 was still burning Thursday evening. “The initial impact appears to have been caused by plumbing and gas work that was occurring inside 121 Second Avenue,” said Mayor de Blasio at a news conference Thursday evening detailing the explosion that injured at least 14 civilians and five emergency responders. See Photos,Videos and  Read more at NBC New York.

See Video Below from CBS News;

https://youtu.be/FW9O0r3nuLE

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3000 pages of documents related to the investigation of the deadly gas explosion that destroyed two buildings in the East Harlem area of Manhattan, NYC have been released  by the National Transportation Safety Board.  The documents indicate that Con Edison replaced a section of the old iron pipe with a plastic pipe in 2011 and that the installation wasn’t pneumatically tested when it was installed. Investigators found that the that the service line had separated from the plastic main. Adding to that it appeared that the foreman wasn’t proprely trained . Read more in the New York Times

 

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