SECOND AVENUE KABOOM TOWN!
Subway-construx blunder sparks massive blast
What a boomdoggle! Second Avenue Subway workers put a protective cover over the wrong hole during escalatorshaft blasting yesterday, sources told The Post — resulting in a massive explosion that rained 100pound chunks of debris on a busy Upper East Side intersection.
“There seemed to be [some] confusion,” a source said.
Witnesses described a shock wave at around 12:45 p.m. that knocked people off their feet and created a 30foot mushroom cloud of smoke and rubble on East 72nd Street and Second Avenue.
The flying rocks sent pedestrians scrambling for safety and shattered an art gallery’s windows, breaking a few vases inside.
“It’s like the blitz in London in World War II!” said Carole Cusa, who lives directly across the street and was thrown from a kitchen chair in her fifthfloor apartment.
“I thought I was going to die,” said fruit vendor MD Islam, who described a scene of blinding dust and mass panic.
Miraculously, there were no injuries.
A source blamed the nearcatastrophe on a “miscommunication” between MTA contractors.
Instead of covering an escalator shaft under construction, the protective metal plate was placed on a vertical hole that led elsewhere below the street.
The agency was hardly sympathetic in an email to longsuffering residents near the project site.
“Today, an underground blast at the northwest corner of 72nd Street and Second Avenue caused debris to breach the cover at the surface,” wrote Michael Horodniceanu, president of MTA Capital Construction. “No injuries were reported and only minor cosmetic property damage was reported.”
Mark Foley, who lives on 72nd, scoffed: That’s “like saying a tiny piece of metal breached [your] skin when you’ve been shot through the head by a bullet.”
MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota said, “While I am thankful that no one was injured today, I fully understand why neighbors of the construction site are upset.”
He called the blast “unacceptable” and ordered all work to stop.
Inside the Kolb Art Gallery at 260 E. 72nd St., worker Marsha Kaufman was knocked to the ground as the store filled with dust. It was later vacated.
“Huge plumes of smoke and rock came shooting out of the hole across the street,” she said. “When they hit the windows, we all froze.”
Yesterday’s blast was not the first time that the contractor SSK — a joint venture of Schiavone, J.F. Shea and Kiewit — has run into problems at the $4.4 billion project.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the company in March for having excessive levels of silica, a deadly carcinogen, at the site. OSHA fined SSK $8,500 for the violations. SSK has appealed.
The company is also on the city’s “caution list,” which is meant to warn agencies of potential problems with a form. It wasn’t clear why SSK landed on the list.
Meanwhile, a smaller but similar incident at the southeast corner of 72nd Street a few weeks ago is still under investigation.