Firefighters continue to hose down the site of a seven-alarm fire that caused the collapse of two buildings and damage to two other buildings.

Reuters/AFP/New York

Two people remained unaccounted for yesterday in the wake of an apparent gas explosion that destroyed four New York City apartment buildings and injured 19 people, police said.
The blast shook Manhattan’s East Village neighbourhood on Thursday afternoon, causing two buildings to collapse and burst into flames and two adjacent buildings to catch fire as well.
The blast appeared to have been gas-related, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
Private gas and plumbing work was going on in one of the buildings, and Con Edison utility inspectors on the scene an hour earlier had determined the work was not satisfactory.
The mayor and other officials inspected the devastated scene, where remains of the buildings were a tangled mess of bricks, wood, steel and broken glass.
A few personal items were visible, including a dresser and some clothes.
Two people have been missing since the blast, officials said.
“We are looking into two individuals who are apparently unaccounted for,” said a New York Police Department spokeswoman.
One of those was identified in local media as Nicholas Figueroa, 23, whose family said he had been eating lunch with a co-worker at a sushi restaurant where the explosion appeared to have originated.
His family told the New York Times that a bank statement showed he had used a debit card to pay $13.04 to Sushi Park.
Figueroa has not been heard from, his family said. His co-worker was hospitalised with injuries.
Local media the other person missing as a bus boy.
The damaged buildings comprised 49 apartments, and the American Red Cross said 90 people registered for assistance.
One of them, Naya Jones, 24, emerged from a makeshift Red Cross centre carrying a stack of folded white towels.
Displaced by the blast, she said she spent the night at a YMCA and voiced concern for the injured victims. “It could have been me.”
Firefighters were searching through rubble that was still burning, said a fire department spokesman.
“We’re putting out smoldering debris,” he said.
Two buildings entirely collapsed, a third mostly collapsed and will have to be razed and the fourth had severe fire damage but was structurally sound, according to fire officials.
Con Edison said that its inspectors had evaluated a gas service upgrade installed in the building that exploded and found it failed inspection partly because there was insufficient space for installation of a meter in the basement.
Dramatic cell phone footage broadcast by TV channel PIX11 showed panicked people running in fear from the sushi restaurant.
“What happened? Oh my God!” one woman is heard yelling.
Bystanders bend over a person lying amid debris.
Last year, eight people were killed when a gas explosion leveled two apartment buildings in East Harlem in northern Manhattan on March 12, 2014.
The East Village is one of the most popular areas of New York, home to a large number of students and wealthy professionals, and stuffed with boutiques, restaurants, nightclubs and cafes.



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