The two five-story buildings at the northwest corner of 116th Street and Park Avenue in Harlem collapsed at about 9:30 a.m., authorities said. Smoke billowed into Central Park and could be seen from miles away in midtown, and New Yorkers said they felt rumbles as far away as 150th Street. Closer to the collapse, groceries were knocked from store shelves and debris floated through the air.
Mayor de Blasio said the buildings are destroyed, and that first responders were digging through the rubble for victims.
The only indication of anything wrong before the explosion was a call to Con Edison from a woman in a nearby building, reporting a strong odor of gas just minutes before the blast, the mayor and the utility said. But it was too late.
"This is a tragedy of the worst kind because there was no indication in time to save people," de Blasio said.
Hospitals reported receiving more than 60 injured, including at least one child who was critically hurt. Most of the injuries were described as non-life-threatening.
Two on-duty FBI agents who were driving through the area at the time of the explosion were among those hurt, but their injuries were not life-threatening, the FBI said.
A woman who said she was watching TV in her home about a block away said the explosion blew out her windows.
"All my windows shattered and I didn't know what it was," she said on NBC 4 New York. She said first responders soon arrived at her building and ordered everyone out.
The blast and collapses registered at just under .5 on the Richter scale, according to the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.
