Update: Bergenfield, NJ- 3rd Alarm/Explosion

[CPAGE 2]

As of this time a 3rd DOA pulled from the building companies still conducting search and rescue opps' nfi att

More to follow as i get it.

CPage

[Guest]

December 15, 2005

Fire Officials Defend Action in Collapse

By RONALD SMOTHERS and JOHN HOLL

NYTimes

One day after an apartment building in Bergenfield, N.J., was destroyed by a natural-gas explosion that killed three people, fire officials faced sharp questioning yesterday about their decision not to evacuate the building or test the air for leaking gas after being alerted that a nearby pipeline had been damaged by a work crew.

Fire Chief John Pampaloni, 52, who was among the Bergenfield firefighters responding to the scene on Tuesday, told reporters at an afternoon news conference yesterday that neither he nor his men smelled gas near the site of the damaged pipeline, which ran under a driveway next to the three-story, 24-unit building.

A crew was excavating an old oil tank when dirt collapsed into the hole, "pinching" the steel pipeline, according to the fire officials.

The chief, looking weary yesterday, said that he detected no odor of gas when he went into the front of the building, so he saw no need to use a hand-held monitor to check for the presence of gas. About 20 minutes after the firefighters arrived and were working with utility workers to shut off the gas, an explosion shook the Bergen County neighborhood and blew off the back of the brick building.

Chief Pampaloni, who is also the public works supervisor in Bergenfield, said that the town's department of 68 volunteers and 6 full-time firefighters regularly responded to reports of leaking gas, and that his crew's trip to the building on Tuesday seemed like a "routine situation" because the firefighters did not smell gas and no residents had complained of any odor.

As an eight-member team from the National Transportation Safety Board started its investigation into the explosion yesterday, law enforcement officials identified two of the three fatalities as Nicolas Vargas, 78, of Apartment 8B, and Frank Smith, 76, of Apartment 6C.

Two others remained hospitalized: Mr. Vargas's wife, Elsa, 67, was in critical condition at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston with burns over nearly half her body. Kathleen Moat, 39, was in fair condition with serious cuts at Hackensack University Medical Center.

Several other residents of the building who had not been accounted for late Tuesday turned up safe yesterday, according to officials.

John Erickson, a vice president for the American Public Gas Association, said it was possible that a leak occurred elsewhere along the pipeline as it connected to the building. Records from Public Service Electric and Gas indicated that the gas line was a steel pipe carrying gas under a pressure of 12 pounds per square inch, said Karl Gunther, who is heading the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation.

Mr. Erickson said steel lines can often crimp or bend, but not break, when damaged in an excavation, creating "tension" further along the pipe that could cause a leak at a weakened joint. If such breaks are under asphalt or frozen ground, he said, "fugitive gas" can migrate along the line until it finds a place to rise.

"It can follow the pipe right up to the building wall and if there are cracks in the foundation it will rise and could get into utility ducts or risers," said Mr. Erickson, who added that such situations are unusual.

Six residents of the building who were interviewed at a Red Cross office in Hackensack yesterday and who were at home at the time of Tuesday's explosion said that they had not detected a gas odor.

But Mr. Gunther of the N.T.S.B. said town fire officials told his investigators that several building residents had called the department to report the smell of gas that morning.

Ms. Moat, in an interview at the hospital in Hackensack, said that she smelled a strong odor of gas in her third-floor apartment in the heavily damaged back of the building. She said she checked the pilot light on her stove, and when she saw it was still burning, she returned to her bedroom to watch television.