071807

New York is a ticking time bomb

This afternoon an underground steam pipe burst and tore through the street near Grand Central Station. I was only a few blocks north on 53rd St. when I heard the terrible thundering noise. A pillar of hot and muddy steam jetted into the air, nearly as high as the Chrysler Building, according to a wire report from the AP. I saw a large number of emergency vehicles and their flashing lights around early evening. No reports of deaths, but several unidentified people were rushed to the hospital. The New York Times reports one dead and 20 injured, 2 critically.

Subway service on the 4, 5, and 6 lines from the Bronx to Brooklyn was immediately suspended. The garbled subway voice attributed the loss in service to a “building collapse,” but later news reports mention only the burst steam pipe at street level.

Below the streets of New York lies an unfathomable network of utility pipes, tunnels, wires, and other artifacts. A benefit, I suppose, of the city’s granite foundation. It looks something like this illustration from National Geographic. There are cast iron steam pipes below ground that are still in use after nearly 100 years. I don’t know what kind of regular maintenance Consolidated Edison performs on these old pipes, but I get the feeling sometimes that even one of the largest energy companies in the US is barely able to handle New York’s aging underground energy system.

In May 2007, ConEd had to hire livery cab drivers to guard manhole covers and sewer grates because stray underground voltage electrified these metal surfaces turning them into electrocution hazards. You can read more about it in this old article from the Daily News. In January 2004, an electrified metal utility box actually killed grad student Jodie Lane as she was walking her dogs in the East Village. Here’s a listing of New York Times articles referencing the Jodie Lane incident.

And the hazards aren’t limited to steam and electricity. Last year, a friend of mine showed me a grate in the street where he saw a gigantic jet of fire shoot up into the sky. According to him, there is a lot of ancient electrical equipment underground with exposed contacts. There are also exposed rivers of heating oil and other flammable liquids. And occasionally electricity will arc between the contacts and ignite any flammable stuff nearby, sending a fireball up to the surface through the nearest available ventilation shaft and toasting anything or anyone who happens to be standing nearby.

I’ve never heard of a city as explosive as New York. We’re living on top of the 19th century, and today’s explosion illustrates the point in a very terrible way.