It may be a while before officials uncover the cause of an explosion and house collapse on Syracuse’s north side that injured several people, including young children.
Syracuse Fire Department District Chief Matthew Craner says unearthing a cause for what’s believed to be a gas leak that lead to an explosion, is time consuming work.
“It is like finding a needle in a haystack, searching through that rubble,” said Craner, who added that National Grid has ruled out any issue with gas service from the street to the house, so the focus now is on what’s left of the two-bedroom home.
"We take all of the possibilities that are out there and start to work back, where it's eliminating things as we can till we narrow it down to that one cause,” he said. “And that's the process we're in right now, but it can be a long process.”
City officials say a Burmese refugee family lived in the home, and another family was visiting at the time of the house collapse. 12 people were injured, 11 were treated at Upstate University Hospital including nine children aged 13 to eight months. The youngest were the most seriously hurt, and are listed in stable but critical condition. Upstate’s Pediatric Trauma Medical Director Dr. Kim Wallenstein said injuries ranged from burns to broken bones and head trauma.
“The injuries mainly included burns obviously because of the situation that happened, but also because it was an explosion event as well, here were blast injuries as well, so things like fractures and head injuries,” Wallenstein said. "We train for this and we drill for this so that when it happens, we know how to deal with multiple situations at once. And I do have to say also our EMS, our ambulance systems and our Syracuse Fire Department did a fantastic job getting all these patients to us and communicating what had been going on."
